You Say To-mah-to, I Say To-may-to.

I returned from vacation today to find one red tomato on my plants in the garden. One. I am hopeful that this means that my neighbors took advantage of my email urging them to pick the ripe ones while I was gone… I’d like to think that as opposed to the alternative, which is that the heat and dry spells of late have stunted any real chance of my getting nice tomatoes this summer.

Of course, this would all make my father chuckle. I grow tomatoes because Southern women are supposed to (and learn to fry chicken, those are hard and fast rules). I do not eat them. It is the only vegetable that I don’t eat. hat’s right, I said vegetable.

I know, you’re thinking that a tomato is a fruit. It’s a distinction steeped in tradition – and, well, tax. You see, the Tariff Act of 1883 required a 10% tax on imported vegetables. Fruits were exempt. Seizing upon this distinction, a businessman by the name of John Nix tried to avoid taxation on the grounds that the tomato was, botanically speaking, a fruit, and not a vegetable. He made a proverbial federal case out of it. The case Nix v. Hedden (149 U.S. 304), made it all of the way to the Supreme Court wherein the court agreed that botanically, a tomato was classed as a fruit but in terms of common usage, it was treated as a vegetable. So, for US purposes, it was also taxed as a vegetable.

So there you go. Next time you’re at a cocktail party, you can say with certainty (and the full backing of the US Supreme Court) that a tomato is, in fact, a vegetable.

Kelly Phillips Erb

Kelly Phillips Erb is a tax attorney, tax writer, and podcaster.

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