Fighting Against Extending California’s Sales Tax to Services a High Priority

SACRAMENTO, CA (MPG) - Oct. 26, 2020—With next week’s election expected to change little of the State Legislature, California’s leading small-business association today announced the shaping of its agenda for the coming 2021-2022 session.

“No one is expecting any big compositional or ideological change to occur in the makeup of the California State Legislature after next week’s election, so we are wasting no time in developing and lobbying for the small business agenda, now,” said John Kabateck, California state director for the National Federation of Independent Business, NFIB. “One issue we’re starting on is the expected bill, or bills, to extend the state’s sales tax to include services, and that begins with an educational outreach to everyone about why that is a bad idea.”

To that end, NFIB California has produced and posted a 32-minute podcast with special guest Anthony Pugliese, president and chief executive officer of the California Society of CPAs and a renowned expert on sales taxes. On it, Pugliese discusses the unintended consequences of extending the sales tax to services, such as its punishing tax pyramiding effect, and the supreme difficulty of determining and recording when, where, and how a service was delivered. Far from helping stabilize California’s tax collection volatility, argues Pugliese, it would exacerbate it.

Keep up with the latest on California small business at www.nfib.com/california or by following NFIB on Twitter @NFIB_CA or on Facebook @NFIB.CA.

For more than 77 years, NFIB has been advocating on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, both in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals. NFIB is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and member-driven association. Since its founding in 1943, NFIB has been exclusively dedicated to small and independent businesses and remains so today. For more information, please visit nfib.com.