A bill to remove the local 1 percent restaurant tax that was originally intended to reap revenues from tourists unanimously cleared the Revenue and Taxation Interim Committee on Wednesday.
It turns out that most patrons of Utah's eateries-- 85 percent according to the bill's sponsor, Rep. Craig Frank, R-Pleasant Grove -- are residents rather than travelers.
"It is us eating in restaurants," said Melva Sine, president of the Utah Restaurant Association.
"We want to get rid of this unfair tax on the industry," Sine added. "That's what we hope to accomplish today."
To protect county budgets from being impacted by this rollback, the bill would also allow a one-tenth of 1 percent bump in the local option sales tax that would take effect in 2011.
Jim Olsen, president of the Utah Retail Merchants Association, spoke against the measure.
"If this bill passes in its current form, it lowers the tax on restaurants but raises it on everything else," said Olsen, who represents groceries and convenience stores. "We've shifted a tax geared toward tourists to residents."
In other business, the committee endorsed legislation that would allow disclosure of the actual sales price when a home or other real estate changed hands.
The buyer would be required to release the dollar figure to the Multi-county Appraisal Trust (MCAT), which in turn could share the data with county assessors, the State Tax Commission and the Utah Association of Realtors.
Date of sale, buyer and seller names and tax identification number for the property would also be included.
The measure, sponsored by Rep. Gage Froerer, a real-estate agent and Republican from Huntsville, would ban disclosing the heretofore concealed information to a wider audience, including the media.
The bill also would prevent public access to the information by way of the Government Records Access and Management Act.
At tax appeal time, county officials would have access to that information to substantiate or refute the assessed property value.
