We go through shoes in my house like paper towels. My kids love the outdoors and all of three of them play sports of some description (rugby, soccer, and field hockey are our current favorites). They beat up shoes. And, of course, I run, so I plow through running shoes on a fairly regular basis.
Thank goodness I don’t live in Illinois.
Illinois lawmakers have introduced a bill that would impose an additional 25 cent tax on the purchase of athletic shoes. Athletic shoes are those that are “designed primarily for sports or other forms of physical activity” – though the actual wording in the final bill will likely be negotiated. As currently proposed, the sneakers wouldn’t have to be used for physical activity, just designed for physical activity – so all of those folks like many of my friends who like to sport their brightly colored sneaks with yoga pants as a fashion statement would get sucked in, too.
The tax would be used to support an Illinois nonprofit which has, as its mission, to provide job training for disadvantaged youth. The particular non-profit that lawmakers have in mind, YouthBuild, has apparently been struggling as Illinois has trimmed its budget.
Rep. Will Davis (D-Hazel Crest), who introduced the bill, believes the tax to be a no-brainer since “I don’t see how an additional 25 cents on a pair of tennis shoes should be a challenge.”
The suggestion is that a little tax here and a little tax there wouldn’t add up. But add up it will: the sneaker tax would bring in an estimated $3 million in revenue per year.
The Illinois Retail Merchants Association isn’t buying it. Rob Karr, vice president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, said about the bill, that “[w]e don’t like product-specific taxes. Taxes should be broad based.”
In addition to more taxes for consumers, the bill would create more work for retailers. Under the bill, Illinois retailers would have to file a special monthly tax return to the Department of Revenue to report the sneaker tax.
That’s in addition to other product-specific taxes already in place.
For his part, Rep. Davis believes that the bill will eventually pass because it has, as its purpose, good intentions. Hmm. Well, we know what they say about those…
