by KYW's Tony Romeo
Pennsylvania rings the cash register twice each time you buy a bottle of booze at a state store. There’s the profit the state takes on the sale. Then there are all those taxes.
The good news is that state representative Robert Donatucci (D-Phila.), the chairman of the House Liquor Control Committee, feels your pain:
"Definitely, liquor in Pennsylvania is overtaxed.”
But the bad news…
“The way the economy is right now, and the fiscal picture of this state, to lower the taxes right now... I don’t see that happening.”
In addition to the sales tax you pay on a bottle of wine or liquor, there’s something called the Johnstown Tax -- an 18-percent levy on each sale, over and above the state sales tax.
It was supposed to be a temporary tax to help the city of Johnstown, Pa. recover from a disastrous flood in 1936 -- but of course many would say that ‘temporary tax’ is an oxymoron like ‘jumbo shrimp’ or ‘little giant.’
All those taxes produced almost $349 million for the state in the last full fiscal year, on top of $80 million in profits from liquor sales.
Suburban Republican state senator John Rafferty, chairman of the Senate Law and Justice Committee, which has oversight of alcohol issues, says that for him, lowering liquor taxes a matter of principle:
“I would like to do it, because the bottom line is, we want to keep the money in the pockets of the consumer -- our citizens.”
Donatucci, meanwhile, believes that state store prices are competitive even with all those taxes. And if the taxes were lowered, he thinks, the state’s massive buying power would make Pennsylvania prices untouchable.
But both Donatucci and Rafferty agree it’ll have to wait at least until the economy improves.
(Photo by KYW's Ed Fischer)
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