Small Restaurant owners in Abingdon VA, and throughout Virginia are at risk. Rising inflation, federal, state, and local taxes, fees, and regulations are strangling us.

'Pass-through' taxation is a horrific financial liability exposure, is a book keeping burden, and bites into our paper thin profit margins in terms of what we can charge the public on our menu (pass through taxes, state and county sales tax, and especially high local meals taxes rob revenue by taking up space on the average guest check--people only want to spend so much). 

Low population towns and regions owe much of their tourist traffic to restaurants and hospitality, and yet instead of protecting local, private restaurant owners, these businesses are burdened with generating a great percentage of the town's total tax revenue and budget. In the case of Abingdon, Virginia restaurants represent 24% of the town's budget!!

Goals of the petition:

>To drastically reform or do away with the Prepared Food (Meals) tax. Possible solutions could be a total or near total reimbursement (or rebate) of the meals tax revenue back to the restaurants.
>To charge a flat, affordable, business license fee, somewhere in the range of $50 to $100 dollars, instead of the gross revenue based license calculation now, which costs the average restaurant somewhere between $1000 and $3000+ per year.
>To reduce the annual ABC license renewal amount charged by 90%.
>For State and local government to be more proactive in obtaining federal and private grants that exist to preserve and promulgate small town businesses. Marketing 'dollar match' grants are not very helpful to small private restaurant owners.