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Maine House Backs Bill to Exempt Seeds From Sales Tax

Posted on: Wednesday, 15 February 2006, 18:00 CST

By Susan M. Cover, Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

Feb. 15--AUGUSTA -- The House supported a bill Tuesday that would exempt seeds from the sales tax, despite a strong committee recommendation against it.

The House voted 116-20 to reject a motion to kill the bill. It still faces a second vote in the House before it heads to the Senate.

Bill sponsor Rep. John Piotti, D-Unity, said the bill corrects a mistake made by the Legislature last year.

While trying to plug a hole in the budget, lawmakers unwittingly extended the 5 percent sales tax to seeds used by home gardeners, said Piotti, chairman of the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee.

"It's a simple, honest issue and it needs to be corrected," he said.

But the chairman of the Taxation Committee, Sen. Joe Perry, D-Bangor, said the bill exempting seeds from the sales tax isn't likely to make it through the Senate.

And if it does, it probably won't get the funding needed to implement it, he said.

If the exemption is approved, the state would lose approximately $97,000 in revenue, according to the Legislature's fiscal office. That's a tax break of less than $1 per person for the estimated 115,000 gardeners in the state, Perry said.

"They can grandstand all they want on the floor of the House, but I don't think anyone can think a $1 tax rebate is as important as cuts to child development services," he said.

Piotti told members of the Taxation Committee during the public hearing that home gardeners shouldn't have to pay a tax to grow their own food.

Others, including the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, said consumers don't pay a tax on food at the grocery store, so they shouldn't pay tax on the seeds.

Perry countered that gardeners pay sales tax on all sorts of gardening-related items -- hoes, wheelbarrows, pesticides and canning jars -- for which they do not get an exemption.

"No one could make a logical case in favor of this," he said. "It's an emotional case." Piotti predicts a close vote in the Senate, because all three Senators on the Taxation Committee -- including Perry -- voted against the bill at the work session.

"We may need some work in the Senate," he said. "I'm hopeful because the issue speaks for itself."

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Copyright (c) 2006, Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

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Source: Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

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