see it that way.
You are correct, there is no line item on the receipt for sales tax on food.
That said, choose one item. For simplicity. make it an apple since it has but one ingredient for raw materials. Before that apple got to the shelf...
- Tree had to be planted by someone who got paid a wage.
- Ground has to be tended with both labor and equipment
- equipment takes fuel to operate
- fertilizer and insecticides have to be applied, also with labor
- the fruit has to be harvested, equipment and labor
- it has to be packaged into boxes that are purchased
- it has to be QC's and inspected
- it has to be shipped to a distributor on our roads in trucks that are taxed
-it has to be shipped to the individual stores all using road equipment
- it has to be unloaded from the truck and stocked on a shelf
- a cashier must ring it all up for you, more labor
This is a very simple list as the real one is a complex tree that runs deep and it probably 200X this long in reality. For example, just the cardboard box the apples are packed in has an entire chain of it's own. ALL of these things are taxed from the top, to the bottom, including every wage dollar paid out to make it all happen,. Fuel tax, tire tax, sales tax on equ... tax on equip repairs, people to manage all of that, they are taxed. So that $1 apple that is not taxed at the register is really a 25c apple and 75c worth of tax overhead that is hidden in the cost to produce it. Obviously I'm taking a wild guess on the percentages here, but more dollars are filtered through government as taxes than people are able to realize. The majority of all dollars pass through the hands of and are spent by government than the people themselves. People would revolt if they ever sat down and realized just how much money government takes
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