Photo by Mr. T in DC.Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans is certainly not a big fan of raising taxes in the District — but that doesn’t mean he thinks food trucks and mobile vendors around the city shouldn’t be paying their fair share. According to a report in the Washington Post, Evans plans to introduce legislation tomorrow which would eliminate a sales tax exemption on food trucks and mobile vendors around the city.
Currently, anyone who conducts business on wheels in the city is required to pay a once-per-year $1,500 fee. According to the Post’s report, that includes 488 “roadway vendors” like food trucks, and 642 “sidewalk vendors” like the people who sell t-shirts to tourists near the National Mall. Under Evans’ proposal, all of those 1,130 vendors would begin paying the city’s ten percent sales tax in lieu of the $1,500 yearly fee. While the tax would certainly be a hit to food trucks — for whom calculating sales tax would require them to add transaction time to a model based on getting people served as quickly as possible — a city government source tells us that the stiffest opposition to the lifting of the exemption is expected to come from the sidewalk vendors.
In the long view, does this mean that Evans is getting softer on his “no new taxes” platform with painful budget deliberations on the horizon? It doesn’t sound like it. During an appearance on NewsTalk with Bruce DePuyt this morning, Evans was adamant that he was not ready to support any kind of tax increase on D.C. residents:
“This foolishness with salaries and Lincoln Navigators is really resonating with the public, and if we can do that, we don’t need more money from the taxpayers,” Evans stated. “When people talk about revenue enhancement, what are they talking about? Are you going to raise the sales tax, which is already the highest in the region? Are you going to raise the income tax, which is already the highest in the region? Property taxes, highest in the region? We don’t have places to go to raise taxes.”
“We can afford to spend less, and that’s what we need to do,” added Evans.
