This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Sen. Stuart Adams is right about one thing. When the state of Utah moved, in 2007, to lower the sales tax rate it adds to people's grocery bills, it introduced an element of instability to the state's tax base.

Apparently, it turned out to be more uncertainty than our leaders could handle. Poor dears. So the Senate voted Monday to shift the burden from its own overloaded brains to the overburdened shoulders of Utah's poor and working classes.

In sort of a corollary to Sutton's Law — named after the criminal who said he robbed banks because that's where the money is — Adams' Senate Bill 270 would more than double the sales tax rate Utahns pay at the grocery check-out because that's where the political strength isn't.

By proposing to lower the general state sales tax rate from 4.74 percent to 4.35 percent, even as the grocery sales tax rate would rise from the current 1.75 percent to that same 4.35 percent, Adams can claim that his bill is more or less revenue neutral, depending on how the numbers are run. And he can argue that the move is not a tax hike.

But, whatever the motive, the effect is an increase in the relative tax burden on those who can least afford to pay.

A poor family spends a much higher proportion of its income on food, and thus will pay a greater proportion of that small income on sales tax. A rich family spends a smaller portion of its income on food, even if it eats often and well, but will benefit from the lower general sales tax rate as it shops for autos, furniture and widescreen TVs.

Of course, in recessionary times, even the relatively well-to-do may realize that those luxury purchases are indeed luxuries, to be put off for another day. That, as Adams notes, introduces a level of revenue instability that really does make writing a state budget more difficult.

But such an increase on a basic necessity seems less about fiscal stability than a search for the path of least resistance.

It would certainly be a greater burden than even the planned hike in the state's gas tax. The proposed gas tax hike, a boost of 30 percent over seven years, would be a load. But it is a long overdue hike in a key source for highway funds, one that places more of the burden on those who use highways, even as it offers people of all income levels a beneficial incentive to drive less.

The proposed grocery tax boost is not nearly so equitable. Perhaps more political leadership will be found in the House, or the governor's office, and those who are elected to run this government will accept the heavy lifting of budget-balancing themselves, rather than take the easy way out by dumping it onto a great many families who cannot fight back.