People on the other side of the issue, I understand where they're coming from. They want their product funded. But my industry is paying the tax to some degree. That's the bottom line. Admittedly, some of the tax is passed on, but my restaurant and food service operators are paying some of this tax out of their own pocket.
[Back Yard Burgers] knew about the [Arkansas soda] tax when it made the move, but it wasn't much of a concern. "It really didn't enter into it at all," King says.
We're funding a program that has a lot of merit. But if it's so important, then everyone should be taxed, not just us.
I'm not saying restaurants are going out of business because of the soda tax. I'm saying it cuts into my profits.
Why should we be singled out more than any other product? It's totally unfair. This industry more than pays its share of taxes and understands its obligation to do that, but these special taxes are another matter.
This could be $10,000 a year on my bottom line. This is not the way to do it: Every time we need something done raise taxes. I couldn't run my business this way.
Obviously for us as an industry, it causes undue harm.
This is a huge, huge loophole. If they could raise one (food tax), they could raise another one.
Citizens against Unfair Taxes, or CUT, has held protests in several Northeast Arkansas stores during the past two weeks, handing out literature that says the tax would go into the ‘black hole of government spending.’
We just feel that it is really an unnecessary tax. There may have been some problems in Medicaid, but we point to the large amounts of fraud.
