Food Fight: Battle Over New Grocery Tax Continues In CT

HARTFORD, CT — State Senate and House Republicans are calling for a special session in order to repeal the prepared meals tax that is set to go into effect Oct. 1.

There was a fervor across the state when the state Department of Revenue Services issued a policy statement that included several common grocery store items under the prepared meal tax.

The new 7.35 percent tax applies to restaurants and was thought by many to cover things such as hot sandwiches served at a grocery store, but DRS’s intepretation of the law also includes things like small bags of lettuce, five loose cookies (but not six or more) and meal replacement bars.

Supermarket managers have been busy in their systems assigning which items get taxed and which don’t.

Gov. Ned Lamont and Senate Democratic legislators called on DRS to issue a new interpretation more in line with legislative intent. Lamont and Office of Policy Management Secretary Melissa McCaw promised clarity on the issue soon at a press conference.

“The legislation could have been written with more specificity,” McCaw said. “...at the end of the day we know what we negotiated with our partners in the legislature and it is our intent to ensure that is what is implemented and that will be done in short order.”

Legislative Republican leaders said that a special session is the only way to guarantee clarity on the issue. It would require a slight majority of legislators in each chamber signing a petition to call themselves back into session.

House Republican leader Themis Klarides said that a minor change in wording caused a whole bunch of problems.

“It opened up a Pandora’s box of all sorts of things to tax,” she said.

Senate Republican leader Len Fasano said that Republicans would be in favor of getting rid of the new one percent additional tax on restaurants and any prepared meals and keeping it at the regular base sales tax rate of 6.35 percent. He added that Democrats have enough votes to fix the language on their own if they want to keep the 7.35 percent rate.

Republican leaders wrote a letter to Democratic legislators urging the special session.

“Though the Governor has called on the Department of Revenue Services to re-interpret Public Act 19-117 and to issue a Policy Statement to supersede Policy Statement 2019(5), such executive action is incomplete and inadequate,” they wrote. “Moreover, it is a dangerous precedent to set to allow legislation to be reinterpreted during closed-door meetings of the executive branch.”

Fasano, who is an attorney by trade, said not going into a special session would put supermarkets in a legal pickle because they could be subject to tax audits in the future. As an attorney he’d advise them not to roll the dice and to tax any possible item that could fall under the law.

Klarides agreed and said coming from a supermarket family she would not take any chances and just add a tax to everything.