The ubiquitous taxman likes to get his fingers on just about anything and then to tax it, forever. There are income taxes, property taxes, and all sorts of consumption taxes to which a grocery store tax is a form of a consumption tax. At the present time there are only fourteen States that charge some sort of sales tax on groceries, with half charging the full State sales tax rate, and the other half charging a reduced percentage of the State sales tax rate. The thing about groceries is that they are an absolute necessity, and because the poor pay an appreciably higher percentage of their income on groceries, a sales tax on groceries is a very regressive tax and hence unfair.
For instance, according to theatlantic.com, those in the lowest 20% income rate spent 16.1% of their income on food, whereas the upper 20% spent 11.6% of their income on food. In addition, those in the lowest 20% income rate spent just over 70& of their food budget at home, whereas the upper 20% spent just 53% of their food budget at home. This means that the poor spent more money as a percentage of their income for food, of which a significantly higher percentage of that food budget was spent at grocery stores as compared to the high income people, signifying that the poor are consciously spending their money in a manner that is of greater efficiency and value to them, yet having at the same time, to pay in certain States, a sales tax penalty for having done so.
While States have budgets and need to meet their budgetary expectations, charging a sales tax for buying food in a grocery store, even at a discounted rate, unfairly burdens the poor in any given State. Should any State be in the business of charging a sales tax, against the people, for their necessity of purchasing food at a grocery store in order to live? While most of the States that charge the full State sales tax provide a route to recover some of the monies spent via a State tax return through rebate or credit, the poorest of the poor won't be able to qualify for this rebate, typically for lack of a tax return, and in addition the rebate itself is not going to recover the amount of monies spent in taxes for groceries throughout the year.
The fact of the matter is if any State is so intent that they absolutely must tax food, they should exempt all grocery store purchases whatsoever from a sales tax, and if necessary, charge a higher tax rate for food that is bought at restaurants. At least by making this change, you are clearly providing the people a choice, whereby for those that are impoverished they will not have to sacrifice additional monies in order to eat by virtue of their buying groceries, unless they deliberately make a conscious decision to bypass this choice by frequenting a restaurant; whereas for the rich and the well off they probably pretty much won't care, although no doubt they will grumble a bit as is their wont.