A decision almost three years ago will finish going into effect next week.
The state’s food sales tax finally sunsets Jan. 1, and Kansas House 60th District Representative Mark Schreiber says it will help residents — as well as communities in rural areas. Originally, the tax was 6.5 percent. It was then cut to 4 percent at the start of 2023 and 2 percent at the start of this year. The tentative framework was set in April 2022, but it took until this spring to finalize plans to end the tax next week.
As part of KVOE’s Newsmaker segment Tuesday, Schreiber says lawmakers factored in the projected losses in sales tax dollars into upcoming budgets before the state started missing monthly revenue projections. Schreiber says lawmakers will continue to pay attention to both the sales tax decision and other 2025 bills to gauge their impacts on state revenues.
Regionally, the trend has been towards reducing or eliminating the tax on food. The personal finance organization Kiplinger says Arkansas has a 0.125 percent sales tax rate, while Missouri’s state sales tax is 1.225 percent. Oklahoma officially does not have a state sales tax on food, but that doesn’t apply to all food items.
