suspend or eliminate sales tax

The two competing candidates for Georgia governor are both focusing on affordability but putting forward starkly different proposals aimed at easing household expenses.

At a time when voters are anxious about the rising cost of living, Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, is pitching a plan to allow local governments to exempt sales taxes on groceries, qualifying take-home family meals, baby formula, diapers and feminine hygiene products. Cities and counties would have to opt in, either permanently or temporarily when grocery prices surge. To help with the transition, she proposed a one-year $250 million “Local Tax Relief Stabilization Fund” that local governments can tap into.

“What we are proposing is very simple. It makes common sense,” Bottoms said at a recent event. “It allows local governments the opportunity to suspend or even eliminate their grocery sales tax. Very simple. There are some states that don’t tax groceries. The state of Georgia doesn’t tax groceries, but local municipalities do. We want to be responsible and thoughtful about how these local municipalities balance their budgets and the relief that they may want to offer to people in their counties and their cities.”

Bottoms’ platform also includes eliminating the income tax for teachers.

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Republican Rick Jackson, a wealthy businessman in the healthcare industry, wants to address affordability concerns with a 50% cut in the state income tax for all taxpayers, a sales tax exemption on some household utilities and an automatic gas tax suspension when those prices surge. He is also proposing a property tax freeze to allow officials time to reconsider how local governments assess property values while creating transparency for residents as well as eliminating taxes on tips.

“I want to start where most Georgians actually feel the affordability crisis: at the gas pump, the power bill, and then the paycheck, especially after taxes come out of the tip … The heart of this plan is immediate relief at the pump, on the monthly utility bill and in the paychecks of working Georgians. I’m not going to pretend that one governor can control every price, but when government can act to lower a bill, it should. And when an outside crisis hits, relief should move as fast as the crisis,” Jackson said at a recent press conference.

But both candidates’ proposals face financial and operational questions.

Bottoms’ grocery plan relies on local governments choosing to opt in. Clint Mueller, deputy director at the state association that represents counties at the state Capitol, said that sales tax makes up a significant share of local governments’ revenue, especially in rural communities with limited commercial activities, and that it’s also unclear whether exemptions would be voted on by local governments or if voters would approve them in a referendum.

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“And if so, who makes that decision to put it out to the local voters?” Mueller asked. “Think Gwinnett County,the county that has 17 municipalities, and they all negotiated agreements on these sales taxes. Well, if somebody’s got to make a decision on exempting groceries, who does that? Does the county have to get all the cities to agree, or do they have to get an agreement and then put it before the voters?”

Danny Kanso, the vice president of public policy at the nonprofit Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, said that while it remains to be seen how local governments could make up the revenue gap, eliminating those taxes would help lower-income families more than an income tax cut, which he said disproportionately benefits higher earners.

“There are revenue substitutes that could be found that might make this a little bit more palatable for localities where they wouldn’t necessarily have to choose between cutting spending or exempting groceries from taxation, but that would require broadening the proposal out a little bit to look for some of these revenues,” Kanso said.

Jackson’s plan to address affordability also offers few specifics about how he might achieve his proposals. Kanso estimated that cutting the income tax in half would cost the state budget more than $8 billion, and it wasn’t clear how the state would replace that revenue.

“[It’s] a hugely expensive proposal and not a lot of indication of how that would be paid for, or where the tax burden would be redistributed to, or what spending cuts would be made to achieve that,” Kanso said.

And like Bottoms’ grocery tax cut, Jackson’s tax cuts on household utilities and fuel would help lower cost for lower-income families, Kanso said, but that it remains to be seen how the state would pay for those proposals without cutting services or raising taxes elsewhere.

“It seems a lot of folks don’t want to talk about the how versus the what, and those are the details that are kind of necessary to determine if this is something that on the net would be positive or negative,” he said.