If
you want to grow government these days, it seems the fashionable thing
to do is invent new taxes. Two years ago, legislators conjured up an
illegal fire “fee.” Last year, they invented a confusing new lumber tax.
Two voter-approved multi-billion dollar tax hikes later, and the
politicians still want more of your money. This time they want to tax
your ammunition.
Two
lawmakers—Assemblymembers Roger Dickenson (D-Sacramento) and Rob Bonta
(D-Alameda) are authoring legislation to impose a nickel-per-bullet tax
on the sale of ammunition in California. Apparently they couldn’t agree
on where to spend the revenue, so each lawmaker is introducing his own
measure.
A
nickel per bullet may not sound like much, but it will mean that each
box of 100 shells purchased by a hunter or recreational shooter will
cost $5 more. Double that number if both proposed bills pass.
Guns
and ammunition are a convenient scapegoat for the tragic loss of life
in recent shootings. But more gun laws and higher taxes won’t stop
crime. In fact, increased laws and taxes could backfire by leaving
law-abiding citizens defenseless and creating a lucrative new source of
revenue for criminal gangs.
Consider
cigarettes, for instance. Taxes may have discouraged smoking, which is a
good thing, but they’ve also created a huge market for smugglers. A
recent study by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy found that more
than one third of cigarettes smoked in California were smuggled into our
state. Not coincidentally, the state with the highest cigarette taxes,
New York, had the highest smuggling rate: 60.9%.
The social costs of smuggling include health and safety risks, increased law enforcement expense and higher crime.
An
ammunition tax will backfire, and the reason is simple: evading a new
tax on bullets will be a piece of cake. California consumers will simply
stop buying ammunition at local gun stores and instead start buying it
online from out-of-state stores that don’t have to collect California
taxes.
True,
these consumers will still owe use tax on these purchases, but few will
pay it—and enforcement will be difficult and, in most cases,
cost-prohibitive.
State
coffers will see little to no additional revenue, but many California
small businesses will suffer greatly as ammunition sales shift to their
out-of-state competitors.
It
won’t be the first time a new tax fails to yield the promised revenue.
Supporters projected that a 2008 malt liquor tax would raise $41 million
for the state. Actual revenue was less than $200,000, because most
manufacturers simply reformulated their products. Tax policy has
consequences.
Another
reason to oppose new taxes and fees is that California already has too
many. As a taxpayer advocate and elected member of the State Board of
Equalization, I oversee the administration and collection of more than
thirty tax and fee programs—like sales taxes, fuel taxes and tire
fees—that impose upon nearly every aspect of life. Each new tax or fee
inevitably grows the state workforce and costs millions of taxpayer
dollars to administer and enforce.
Speaking
of enforcement, California already has some of the strictest and most
complicated gun laws in the nation. The problem is we don’t do a very
good job enforcing those laws with the billions in taxes Californians
already pay.
At
a recent legislative hearing, the Attorney General’s office reported
that it lacks the resources to enforce existing laws prohibiting felons
and other dangerous individuals from owning weapons. Nearly 20,000
people identified by the Armed Prohibited Persons System are in illegal
possession of firearms, but there aren’t nearly enough investigators to
keep up. And the backlog grows daily.
It’s
not a question of whether Californians are paying enough taxes—we
clearly are. It’s the state’s spending priorities that are out of whack.
We
don’t need a bullet tax, and we don’t need more tax and fee programs.
Legislators simply need to stop enacting new laws that chase law-abiding
taxpayers and jobs out of our state, and instead start prioritizing the
enforcement of laws we already have on the books.