We need your help in asking New Mexico’s Mayors, City Councilors, Legislators and the Governor not to reimpose a regressive tax on food.

Just in time for the holidays, the latest proposal has come from the New Mexico Municipal League (which represents mayors and city councilors) to reimpose the food tax in New Mexico.

Back before New Mexico repealed the food tax in 2004, Allen Sanchez was waiting in the check-out line at Walmart when he noticed in front of him a mother with her teenage daughter and younger child. When the final item was scanned, they didn’t have enough money to pay the bill. The daughter, who had been adding up the cost of each item as it went into the cart, had forgotten to include the tax. They ended up having to take a box of Cream of Wheat and a frozen pizza out of the cart. As Allen told us, “If the food tax hadn’t been there, that food would have stayed in the cart.”

The food tax is an extremely regressive tax because those who are least able to afford it bear the greatest burden. It is an anti-family tax because the larger your family, the more mouths you have to feed, and the more food you have to buy.

Reimposing the food tax is a particularly bad idea in the current difficult economic climate. More families than ever are living paycheck to paycheck, and any money they would be forced to spend on a food tax is money that they would otherwise be able to spend on other goods and services from local businesses. This in turn makes it less likely that those businesses will hire more employees, something we desperately need to help New Mexico recover from its current jobs crisis.

Today, only Mississippi and Alabama fully tax the sale of food.

Join us in the fight to prevent this proposal from ever becoming a reality. Please sign this petition and contact New Mexico’s Mayors, City Councilors, Legislators and the Governor to urge them to keep food tax-free in New Mexico!

Visit http://www.thinknewmexico.org/foodtax.html for more information.

Thank you!