Got a coupon for 30% a Blu-Ray player? If the Connecticut governor gets his way, you’d still be paying sales tax on that player’s full price.

Governor Dannel P. Malloy isn’t earning many fans with his proposal, one of many measures his government is considering in the face of a huge budget shortfall.

“It’s true, it’s a new tax. It sucks,” the governor’s budget chief said. “Every single one of those, however many, 20-odd taxes is a new tax and it sucks. I don’t know how to hide it. These are new taxes.”

Hartford Courant columnist Dan Haar doesn’t just think it sucks. He writes that it “flies in the face of basic commerce. It’s not just voodoo economics, it’s imaginary economics.”

Haar points out that there are just too many instances where the state would be charging consumers taxes on a full price that would never have been paid:

The suit you see advertised on the Joseph A. Bank web site this morning for $169, “regularly $550?” Good luck trying to pay $550 for it, ever. When the store does charge full price, it will give you two other suits for no extra charge, or maybe a suit and two shirts, or on a bad day, just one extra suit…

Ever see the list price of a camera? It’s a joke. There isn’t a store in America that charges list for a camera. Some use coupons, others “special deals,” others just set the low rate — as they see fit.

He believes that the proposed tax is “the state taking away the ability of merchants to offer the deals they want, how they want, timed to meet their needs.”

Coupon Users Furious Over Proposed Tax [AP]
Coupon Tax Isn’t Unfair, It’s Unworkable [Hartford Courant]

Thanks to Patrick for the tip!

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