Data Dive: Which states tax groceries?

Mississippi is one among solely 13 states that tax groceries, and at 7%, the state’s tax is the very best within the nation.

View the info on the states that tax their groceries, together with normal gross sales tax charges:

Grocery taxes solely proceed to burden low-income folks, which compounds one other drawback of meals insecurity: Mississippi has the very best meals insecurity charge within the nation, in response to 2020 knowledge supplied by Feeding America.

Mississippi, the poorest state, additionally has one of many highest gross sales tax charges throughout the board, matching Indiana, Rhode Island and Tennessee. California has the very best gross sales tax of seven.25%.

The controversy on whether or not or to not minimize Mississippi’s grocery tax has continued for years, with late politician Alan Nunnelee calling the 7% tax “essentially the most merciless tax any authorities can impose” way back to 2007.

READ MORE: Some see grocery tax as ‘merciless.’ Others, together with high state leaders, consider it’s honest.

As Bobby Harrison reported in a 2020 evaluation, Vice President for State Fiscal Coverage Michael Leachman of the Middle on Price range and Coverage Priorities argued that Mississippi — the primary state to impose a modern-day gross sales tax — did so due to race, at the very least partially.

To cite Harrison, “Even when Mississippi politicians are given an enormous advantage of the doubt on the difficulty of race that historical past tells us they won’t deserve, it’s honest to imagine {that a} excessive share of individuals whom [former Gov. Mike] Connor was referencing as paying no taxes had been African American. In spite of everything, due to the upper ranges of poverty amongst Black residents, they’d then and have now much less property and revenue to tax.

Lots of the states the place the upper gross sales taxes could be discovered are within the South. And solely three states levy as a lot gross sales tax on meals as they do on different retail objects. Two of these are also Southern states — Mississippi and Alabama — with the opposite being South Dakota.”

As of 2022, the variety of states that levy their full gross sales tax on meals is now seven: Alabama, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

Elected officers, although they focus on the potential of reducing the grocery tax, have constantly said that revenue tax is their precedence.

READ MORE:

• Tennessee exempted taxes on meals. Mississippi exempted taxes on weapons.
• Grocery tax minimize thought-about, however by no means acted upon by state’s political management
• Key Home chief says Mississippi ought to minimize highest-in-nation grocery tax