KEEP GROCERIES AFFORDABLE
FOR WASHINGTON FAMILIES.
Join Yes! To Affordable Groceries to protect hard-working families and neighborhood businesses from grocery taxes.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tod Wolf, Chair of the Board of Directors
6310 Mt Tacoma Drive SW
Lakewood, WA 98499
253-582-9400
Lakewood Chamber Chair of the Board: “I-1634 will protect small businesses and their customers”
The cost of running a business in Washington keeps rising, and that is having a real impact on small businesses and working families. Increased costs are being passed on to consumers, making it harder for Washington families to afford the basics and for business to keep customers and in turn, continue to create jobs in our community.
The last thing we need is taxes on everyday groceries, and this is the reason the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce has endorsed I-1634, Yes! To Affordable Groceries, on the ballot in November.
I-1634 will prevent new, local taxes on food and beverages: from meats to dairy products, to iced teas and juice drinks — life’s basic items that hard working families are putting in their carts and local businesses are providing for their customers on a daily basis.
We don’t need to look very far to see evidence of the impacts of taxes like these. Businesses have been forced to significantly up prices due to the implementation of the sweetened beverage tax in Seattle. The city passed the tax without considering business community voices. Seattle’s own City Finance Director Glen Lee acknowledged in a recent news story that while the tax is charged at the distributor level, it’s on retailers to figure out how they will handle those increased costs, which can include raising prices for “other brands, other product lines, including lawn care, meat, poultry.”
Around the country, these regressive taxes have forced restaurant and coffee shop owners, small grocers and local distributors to raise their prices, compromising their ability to compete, or to make other difficult decisions like cutting employees’ hours or downsizing staff.
While it may seem like a drop in the bucket to some, even a minor shift in pricing on a particular line of products can be detrimental to small companies that operate on narrow margins. While we may not yet have a tax similar to Seattle’s in our area, it’s not a stretch. A beverage tax was first in Seattle. But what’s next? A meat tax? A dairy tax? It’s a slippery slope. Some like to call the Seattle beverage tax a soda tax – but it impacts much more than soda. It applies to over 4,000 different products – from almond milk to sports drinks and bottled tea and coffee drinks.
We are proud to be the first chamber in the state to publicly announce support for this proactive initiative. We are joining an effort backed by so many small businesses in our region and around the state as well as a highly respected group of organizational partners that represent thousands of jobs in Washington: The Food Industry Association, Retailers Association, Hospitality Association, Korean-American Grocer’s Association, the Joint Council of Teamsters, and major statewide agricultural organizations.
In November, we urge you to join us to support jobs, keep our groceries affordable and supporting the small businesses that are the backbone of our community by voting Yes! To Affordable Groceries, I-1634.