Friday, November 11, 2011

The Christmas Tree Tax

As if you're not getting taxed enough already, there was a story going around this week about a special new tax that many of us would be paying over the next month or so: a Christmas tree tax. And the story is true: There really was a plan to assess a tax of 15 cents on each Christmas tree sold.

But the story comes with a couple of caveats. For one thing, the whole scheme was the brainchild of the private Christmas Tree Task Force, which wanted to set up a program in partnership with the USDA to help promote the sales of Christmas trees, along the lines of the milk producers' "Got Milk?" campaign. The 15-cent assessment was supposed to go toward funding those efforts.

More importantly, even though the Christmas tree producers themselves wanted the program implemented, the hue and cry surrounding it was so great that the whole thing has been canceled. "I can tell you unequivocally," said a White House press secretary, "that the Obama administration is not taxing Christmas trees."

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