Frugal shoppers know: If you want to buy stuff and not pay any sales tax, Delaware is but a short drive away from the Washington region. But there is a closer alternative for duty-free consumerism — pretty much any Smithsonian gift shop.

But now D.C. officials are asking for that to change.

As part of the 2022 budget making its last steps through the D.C. Council, city officials are asking Congress to allow them to charge D.C.’s 6% sales taxes in gift shops and 10% restaurant tax in cafeterias located in federal buildings.

“If you buy your Christmas gifts in the Freer Gallery, you pay no sales tax. But if you go [to a D.C. business] and decide you’re going to buy them there, you have to pay 6% sales tax,” says Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. “It’s not fair to D.C. businesses, and it makes no sense.”

The Smithsonian Institution hosts more than a dozen gift shops across its D.C. museums and the National Zoo, stocked with toys, art, jewelry, a slew of holiday ornaments, and unusual neckties. Many of the cafes and restaurants scattered around the museum, meanwhile, remain temporarily closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The acclaimed Sweet Home Cafe at the National Museum of African American History and Culture is serving a limited menu, for example, while the Dolcezza outpost inside the Hirshhorn Museum is closed.

According to Linda St. Thomas, the spokeswoman for the Smithsonian Institution, the tax-free situation has persisted for so long for a relatively simple reason. “Our customers in shops and cafes have not paid sales tax because our buildings are federal,” she says. (The Smithsonian hasn’t otherwise taken a position on D.C.’s request.)

Other federal buildings play host to cafeterias: The Ronald Reagan Federal Building and International Trade Center, for example, has restaurants and shops in it.

The city has quietly waged the fight over at least the last five years, but has recently picked up a more powerful ally: D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who in late 2020 introduced legislation that would allow any state, city, or county across the U.S. to charge sales taxes in shops or cafeterias in federal buildings. She contests the idea that just because a shop or cafeteria is in the a federal building it should be exempt from local taxes.

“Think about it. While these gift shops are located on federal property, nothing that happens in a gift shop is what we call inherently governmental. Inherently governmental would mean you cannot charge any tax. But these gift shops sell the same things that we sell in downtown Washington, games and books and even clothes,” Norton says.

Mendelson also says the fight serves as another example of “some of the unfairness of the relationship” between D.C. and the federal government. In 2004, as the city struggled to emerge from a financial crisis that had led to the imposition of a federal Control Board, the U.S. Government Accountability Office determined that the city’s “revenue capacity would be larger without constraints on its taxing authority, such as its inability to tax federal property or the income of nonresidents.” (Roughly 40% of D.C.’s land is owned by the federal government.)

Steps have been taken to address some of those challenges, though. Almost two decades ago D.C. started charging what’s known as a possessory interest tax on businesses operating in federal properties, notably Union Station with its large commercial presence and the Trump Hotel. The tax serves as an alternative to a property tax, which the city can’t levy because Union Station and other federal properties are exempt. (The possessory interest tax was unsuccessfully challenged in court.)

There’s no recent estimate as to how much tax revenue D.C. would see were it allowed to charge sales and restaurant taxes in federal buildings, but Norton guesses it would “generate millions of dollars” every year. Sales taxes account for $1.1 billion in yearly revenue for D.C., or almost 12% of all money the city takes in. (Income and property taxes account for two-thirds of all revenue.)

The council is expected to give final approval to the 2022 budget next week, after which it will send the request to Congress. Norton says she also plans on reintroducing her bill this session.