Aberdeen lobbyist Julie Johnson plays dumb about the retail transaction tax initiative:
Johnson said the transaction tax proposal lacks clear definitions of what constitutes a transaction.
“Is it just a current sales tax transaction? Is it when I move money from my savings account to my checking account? When I issue payroll, is that a transaction?” Johnson said. “Transaction is not well defined at all at this point.”
Johnson is correct that the initiative, which would also ban property taxes and short local governments by at least $850 million, does not define “retail transaction”. But it does say “retail transaction”, not just “transaction”. Johnson’s attempt to implicate “transactions” in general is specious and misinforming.
Johnson has a law degree; I just write stuff. But when I first heard of the retail transaction tax initiative, I searched through South Dakota’s constitution and codified law for any mention of “retail”. SDCL 10-45-1 in the Retail Sales and Service Tax” chapter defines “retailer”—”any person engaged in the business of selling tangible goods, wares, or merchandise at retail, or the furnishing of gas, electricity, water, and communication service, and tickets or admissions to places of amusement and athletic events as provided in this chapter, and the sale at retail of products transferred electronically”—but not “retail”. We could turn to federal law, but let’s keep things simple and check common use, from Merriam-Webster:
- retail (verb): to sell in small quantities directly to the ultimate consumer
- retail (noun): the sale of commodities or goods in small quantities to ultimate consumers
When my employer writes my paycheck, I am not selling commodities or goods in small quantities. I’m giving my employer an enormous and ongoing supply of my life and liberty (40% of my waking hours!). That’s not a retail transaction.
When you move money from your savings to your checking account, you aren’t selling anything to anybody. That’s not a retail transaction.
You could say that the bank is acting as a retailer, providing you and lots of customers like you with the service of housing your money and occasionally shifting electrons between database fields to signify your shuffling of funds, but if the bank doesn’t charge you for that service (mine doesn’t), then the proposed retail transaction tax—10% on transactions under $15, $1.50 on transactions $15 and up—would be 10% of zero, which is zero.
Johnson lobbies for Aberdeen’s businessarrazzi enough to know full well what retail is and isn’t. And she can read the word “retail” clearly appended to the word “transaction” in every instance in the initiative text and in her friend Attorney General Marty Jackley’s emphatic quote marks in his official title and explanation for the initiative. It sounds like Johnson is trying to come up with wild examples to scare people away from this initiative (and I’m sure that Johnson is prepared to advance the mainstream Chamber of Commerce Republican line of opposition to this radical initiative).
But Julie, Julie, Julie: you don’t need to make up flimsy and easily rebuttable what-ifs to drive home the radical badness of this initiative. Just tell people, “These radicals want to charge you a buck-fifty every time you go to Kessler’s and take away $850 million from the schools, counties, and cities.”
Or just tell your listeners to read Dakota Free Press for solid analysis of the retail transaction tax. I’ve got it covered.