Hooray! Christmas has been saved!
Okay, a bit dramatic.
But the hue and cry surrounding the so-called Christmas tree tax had reached such a fevered pitch by this afternoon that you could have assumed the very holiday itself was under attack. Rest assured, the holidays are still on track.
Nonetheless, President Obama announced plans to nix the proposed fee on the sale of Christmas trees. No more Christmas tree tax.
The fees from the sale – which had been characterized as a tax – were intended to fund the Christmas Tree Promotion Board. That’s right. As I blogged earlier today, the point of the board was to boost the image of Christmas trees.
Really? Christmas trees don’t have an image problem. Brussel sprouts. There’s your image problem.
But there were a couple of bigger issues here.
One, the fee would likely have been passed along to the consumer. And it was a small fee. But it was a fee. Another one. Another fee imposed at the government level that consumers bear. Of course, the National Christmas Tree Association was quick to promise that wouldn’t happen, saying that the program “is not expected to have any impact on the final price consumers pay for their Christmas tree.” I don’t buy it. The cost of business is the cost of business. All business owners understand that. They don’t eat fees out of the kindness of their hearts – even if they are selling the most jolly items on the planet.
The bigger concern was that government is picking and choosing industries to support. As I blogged earlier, that feels wrong. No wonder most Christmas tree growers were in favor of the charge. Who wouldn’t want a government-organized national campaign meant to improve the sale of your product or services?
But why Christmas trees and not, say, Christmas wreaths? Or Halloween pumpkins? Heck, I’m a lawyer. We have an image problem. Why not impose a federal mandated fee on the provision of legal services so that we can form a national board to improve our image? (Yeah, yeah, insert all of your lawyer image jokes here.)
Fee or not, I was buying my tree. I suspect most other Christmas tree buyers felt the same. The issue was never about the scope of the fee. And it wasn’t the presumption that the President was secretly plotting to destroy Christmas (really, people, you actually believed that?).
It was about free market and government and priorities and slippery slopes. And I, for one, am glad to put a period at the end of this one.
(I weighed in on a related story here.)
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