|
The New Jersey Restaurant Association and New Jersey Taxpayers Alliance teamed together with civic and business leaders today to share opinions and positions on the plight of the state's finances and its impact on businesses, business owners and individual taxpayers in the continuing spiral of the state's fiscal decline.
Deborah Dowdell, President, New Jersey Restaurant Association, delivered the following remarks:
On behalf of the 23,000 eating and drinking establishments in New Jersey employing over 300,000 people, the New Jersey Restaurant Association is here today to present an element of the misery index, a proposed increase in the excise tax on wine and spirits by 25%, projecting to yield $22 million to the state budget for fiscal year 2010. With this 25% wine and spirits tax increase, the small pleasures in life including the champagne toast at a wedding, the margarita after work or the bottle of wine shared at dinner will cost consumers more, another example of the rising misery index for residents of N.J.
Currently the retail price of the average bottle of wine and spirits includes almost 50% tax, that's miserable enough! Governor Corzine's proposed budget calls for increasing that tax by 25%, and that tax increase cannot be absorbed by restaurants, bars, catering facilities and liquor stores, so we'll have to pass that tax along to the millions of customers we serve everyday.
We're spreading that word beyond the halls of Trenton, and along with the NJ Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association and the NJ Liquor Stores Alliance, the New Jersey Restaurant Association launched a petition drive to alert our customers of proposed alcohol tax increase. Today we are submitting to the Governor's office and to legislative leadership a petition containing almost 6,000 signatures and more and more are coming into our office everyday. Further, a website has been established where emails can be sent to legislators: www.axetaxesnotjobs.com.
We know when this tax was increased last in the early 1990's it had a negative impact on the state. It cost jobs for the drivers who deliver the product, reduced tips for bartenders and waiters who serve the product, and reduced consumption by our patrons who purchase the product in our restaurants and liquor stores, all resulting in an increased burden on unemployment, payroll taxes, and our customers' pocketbooks.
All of these impacts render the Administration's projected $22 million revenue line item, arbitrary. We say the tax projection won't be reached and the resulting impact will far outweigh the revenues that will be collected. The misery index will rise yet again, and the damage will be done- to an industry as it struggles to rebuild in this tough economy and on our customers who are already struggling to make ends meet. We urge reconsideration of this proposed wine and spirits tax increase.
A wise member once told me that restaurants are "an industry of pennies, not dollars." And, that's because the hospitality industry average net profit is 3%. For every dollar that we collect we see a mere 3 cents of profits. So the tax increase here and the fee increase there is like death by a thousand little cuts, adding up to a lot of dollars that in this economy, increasingly we don't have.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed