Taxaholics of the day: Denver moves to tax cooking oil
Saw this yesterday in the Denver Post. Restaurants in the Mile High City are fried over the latest tax grab:
Colorado Restaurant Association Big Cheese Pete Meersman is afraid the city of Denver’s Department of Revenue is jumping out of the frying pan and into the fryer.
At issue? During some recent restaurant-industry audits, the city has claimed separate sales tax on frying oil, claiming that the oil is a separate product because it is not absorbed into the product.
Try telling that to a cardiologist who wants you to cut down on French fries.
“Let’s say you have a grilled cheese sandwich restaurant,” Meersman said. “All the products you get in — including the oil, bread, cheese, garnishes — you don’t pay sales tax on because you’re going to turn around and add all those costs up, charge a price and the customer pays sales tax on top of that.
“The problem with trying to collect sales tax on wholesale cooking oil is that it is already being taxed on the retail side.”
The city’s vigilance in trying to collect a separate tax on oil has boiled to the point where Sysco Denver Food Service Co., the largest food-service distributor in the Rocky Mountain region, is disputing a $90,000 tax assessment on fry shortening.
“It’s a new interpretation by someone new in city government to try and tell us shortening is not part of the food,” said Sysco president Chris DeWitt. “We’ve never been taxed (on oil) before. This puts an undue hardship on the distributor who eventually must pass that cost along to our (restaurant) customers.”
…What’s next, he argues? “Are they going to start charging sales tax on potato peelings? Uneaten chicken bones? The water that’s used to boil pasta? Clam shells?
Soon, “Mile High” will refer to the mountainous stack of taxes driving businesses out of the state.
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The next item they will try to tax is the writing of bloggers. $1 for nouns, and $2 for verbs. Of course, if you’re politically correct, you will get a discount.
Uhhh…now that you mention it, why, yes.
Sounds to me like these government officials in Denver need to get some oxygen quick to stem the hallucinations of a quick buck they are getting from the lack of oxygen in the mile high city.
verogolfer: That will be $210.
Idiots.
What else can one say?
Dangerous idiots….
So the nanny state is again caught in a lie. Didn’t they make fast food restaurants change oil because of the transfats? Either it’s absorbed or it’s not.
Denver, like much of Colorado, has been Californicated! Very sad.
Please, don’t give them ideas.
Desparation often lets us separate the idiots from mere fools.
Anyone else remember the live-action Popeye movie starring Robin Williams? The taxman in that film was supposed to be an over the top parody, but he’s sadly looking more and more real every day.
Then elect them.
We got the government for which we voted.
LOL, Popeye being prophetic, how I hate the 21st century.
http://townhall.com/cartoons/2009/06/01/3
The only rational response…
That is why one should never give in to the statists’ demands. They will have it both ways.
How about taxing contributions given to the democrat party. I’d support that.
If they get away with this, expect every other entity in the nation with a sales tax to follow along.
I wonder if it ever occurred to them that taxing FOOD is exactly what gets governments overthrown?
And here’s the punchline to this sad joke.
In a word, ‘yes’.
Wait ’til they tax you on the waste you let out in the toilet.
Welfare recipients, slum-dwellers and those in Malibu/Beverly Hills will be exempt.
They already do here, in Charlottesville, VA. Its built into the water bill.
Shhh. I wouldn’t go around telling a lot of people you’ve seen Popeye.
when it comes to taking taxpayer money, liberals can be down right thieves.
I only wish they’d make this tax very high to give restaurant owners no other choice but to move just outside the city limits.
Real conservatives do not tax food at ALL regardless of how/where it is sold because it is taxing a basic act of living.
What’s next from these lib elitists? How about a sales tax on rent or doctor visits or tuition or ___? There’s just no limit to what liberals can tax.
I’ve been saying for a while now, they will start taxing how many times you use the sidewalk and how far you walked. Next will come how many breaths you take a day and a surcharge for athletes who breathe more and faster.
By rotten crooks who are desperate to preserve their lifestyles, by stealing from the people.
“Wow! It’s a new day Olive! Igigigigig!”
RTater #12
Hey!! I didn’t vote for this government!!
JHSII #27 – That’s why I used the word we, and not the word you.
You’d think that the track record for democrat-majority cities and democrat-majority States would be enough to get people to stop voting for democrats.
You would be wrong.
This is another example of morons running the show. I believe it was N.Y. City where the perfectly stupid idea of taxing soft drinks with suger will raise revenues & somehow, through a process not known to science or any objective evidence, help reduce obesity. We have arrived at the point where even food can be divided into P.C. and Not P.C. Being Not P.C. makes that product, manufacturer, & end user a target for taxation & other punishments.
RTater: Liberals have reached a critical mass in the voting public (meaning just the people who vote). They have more people who are living off the government who vote, than the conservatives have who work for a living and vote. This number is of course skewed, as always, by the number of dead who vote, the number of illegals who vote, and the duplicate votes. Unless there is a major upheaval of some sort, the Dems have the votes sealed up for the next century.
Yes, and the steam in “steamed vegetables”.
I believe that when you use fire to cook, oxygen from the air is used and has not been taxed. An oxygen tax is in order here.
When you have a beer, it’s taxed, but when you pee, you have only paid tax on the water in the sewage, not the urine. Don’t make me describe the opportunity to tax solid waste…
AlohaGuy–that would mean…*horrors!*…you tax Barney Frank???
Given the desperation for raising reveune, the libs will try to tax everything they can think of if they can get away with it.
Nah, he’s a member of CONgress, therefore, exempt.
On June 1st, 2009 at 12:21 pm, rambler said:
“How about taxing contributions given to the democrat party. I’d support that.”
Best idea I’ve seen in a long time……. Something like a idiot tax
That’ll be a $1 “I watched Popeye movie” tax.
Crist put another $1 per pack tax on smokes here in Floriduh.
Up next? That’ll be a $1 tax on that $1 tax you owe on your income tax.
Errah, by that logic they can charge us tax on engine oil or earthworm in our yards . . . . why not a cap and trade system for the hot air generated by local state and federal politicians. We go broke paying their tax and it would put an end to all this uselessness.
Errah #34 LOL!!!!!!!
Taxing our culinary “vices” is the first half of the equation.
The other half comes when we get socialized medicine and its system of rationing: if you’re overweight, for example, don’t expect any sympathy at the hospital if you find yourself suffering from heart disease or diabetes. Instead, you’ll be presented with a background investigation form:
Do you now or have you ever:
- Eaten fast food?
- Drank alcohol?
- Eaten pizza?
- Drank soda?
- Eaten red meat?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above, then COVERAGE DENIED!
Are you now or have you ever been:
- A cigarette smoker?
- A non-vegetarian?
- An alcoholic?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above, then COVERAGE DENIED!
If the answers to all of the above are “no,” then get in line right after the pregnant woman waiting 10 months for prenatal care…
And yet Crist thinks he has a shot at the open Senate seat. After he sucked up to Obama for a share of the stimulus pie, he’ll never see my check mark next to his name.
What a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. This Russian blogger that Drudge linked is sounding mroe and more prescient: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/
#43 – oh great….and the Chinese laughed at Geithner. Both correct…
JD,
Ditto. He may get elected because he is leaning waaaaaaayyyyyyy left. More taxes – he is a shoe-in for the liberal vote. I look at our Republicans in Florida and have to shake my head. LOTE voting is becoming so tiresome.
How’s that baby doing?
Whether the oil is absorbed into the product or not doesn’t matter. The cost of the oil along with all other costs of making the product are factored into the final price; otherwise, they would lose money and go out of business. Sales taxes are charged on the final purchase price, so the full cost of the oil is already being taxed.
The same thing happens with items like napkins and cups. These items are not consumed by the customer, but their costs are factored into the final price and are taxed along with the food.
Maybe Denver customers should sue to recover some of their sales taxes. Since labor is already taxed through income tax, there should be no sales tax on the cost of labor that is factored into the price of the product. That is another form of double taxation.
Maybe the City and County of Denver will begin paying the homeless for urinating and defecating on the City streets because they are adding “Product” to the downtown area and not taking away from it?
Isnt this why we came to America and left the UK?
Sounds to me like it is time to refresh the tree of Liberty.
Well what exactly do we expect after all the stupid taxes WE have allowed in this country? If you hand a lunatic a loaded gun and tell him to shoot you with it, do you think he’s going to just walk away?
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
Let’s tax taxes!!!
Then let’s start collecting next years taxes this year!
And we can tax the future taxes too.
Here in Hawaii they do. It’s an excise tax, not a sales tax, and the money you collect to pay the tax is also taxed.
Tell that tax collector he can have his cooking oil tax after he’s chowed down on a basket of fries cooked in used motor oil.
When did the elevation of NYC become 5280 feet?
it’s called a sewer charge in OK…you flush a whole lot your sewer charge goes up according to your water usage…