03:41 PM CST on Thursday, March 10, 2005

Associated Press and 11 News Staff Reports

Houston State Representative Hubert Vo wants to keep his fellow lawmakers from taxing snacks and medicine.

Vo has proposed an amendment to the Texas Constitution that would make a tax on those items off limits.

Texas Lawmakers are considering several plans to expand the state sales tax, including one that would tax soft drinks and other snack foods.

DALLAS -- It isn’t that Shonda Ukeje is opposed to spending more money for education. She just can’t stomach the idea of lawmakers taxing cookies, doughnuts, sodas and other snack foods without nibbling a bit on the caviar crowd, too.

“Poor folk robbery,” the 53-year-old former truck driver said Thursday while comparing prices of cake mix at a Dallas grocery store. “Figure out another way to contribute to the education of the youth. Take Bush off of that farm or something.”

But Terah Hatter of Midland was kind of sweet on the idea, even as she, her husband and two sons devoured glazed doughnuts at a Dallas Krispy Kreme.

“I don’t mind paying 10 cents more for my doughnut if it goes toward education,” said Hatter, whose 5-year-old sat slumped in a booth, shirt sprinkled with frosting, hand reaching for one more chocolate glazed.

Lawmakers on Thursday were set to debate a 3 percent snack tax, along with an expanded sales tax, and $1 increase on a pack of cigarettes, as they continue looking for ways to pay for property tax relief promised in a new school funding system.

The snack tax would also be levied on cakes, pies, pastries, tortes, chips and nuts not bought in restaurants.

While Texans interviewed this week appear split on the issue, snack food manufacturers and retailers are strongly opposed to a tax on food, saying the concept has resulted in confusion and munchie mayhem in other states.

“It’s been tried before and it’s always failed,” said Charles Nicolas, spokesman for Plano-based Frito-Lay. “Snack taxes are very difficult for retailers to make effective. Ultimately, it hurts the consumer and smaller retailers.”

He acknowledges Cheetos and Ruffles aren’t exactly essential foods—after all, the company’s Web site proudly displays the slogan “food for the fun of it!”

But he says, “Just because it’s good food and people enjoy it, doesn’t mean it needs to be taxed.”

The folks at the Don’t Tax Food Coalition agree. The group, which represents a baker’s dozen of national food maker associations, fired off a letter to Texas lawmakers last year when the issue came up in a special session.

The letter called the taxes “arbitrary, discriminatory, regressive and inefficient to collect and administer” and warned Texas that every state that has enacted such a tax has repealed it.

“Our point is that you shouldn’t tax any food,” said Stephanie Childs, spokeswoman for coalition member Grocery Manufacturers of America Inc. “If government begins deciding which foods are acceptable, you begin discriminating against my choice as a consumer. Are they going to tax certain high-end cheeses, certain high-end crackers?”

California’s 1991 snack tax was repealed after it caused cookie chaos to store counters across the state. Under the law, sugarcoated beer nuts got levied, but not peanuts. Breath mints were taxed, but not spicy fried pig skins. And marshmallows were considered an essential food. Confused clerks ended up taxing too much or too little.

The tax came back to bite Maine, too, after an attempt to dip into the Girl Scouts’ cookie jar. A judge ruled in 1995 that the state wouldn’t get a single crumb of its proposed 6 percent tax on the cookies and chastised state officials as “arbitrary and capricious” in applying the snack tax.

Still, Dallas private school teacher Patricia Bowie says a tax on junk food is a small price to pay for better schools.

“I’m not sure that snack food is any less of a luxury or a sin than alcohol or cigarettes,” said Bowie, a 49-year-old teacher who taught at public school for seven years. “And with obesity such a problem, I see where we need to address it.”

Besides, she says, it’s high time that all the folks giving lip service to public education put their money where their mouth is.