Christmas Tree Taxes

Christmas Tree Taxes

This year when you're looking to trees at the tree yard for your yearly celebration of whatever holiday you're doing, you'll be shocked.. no, surprised. Stunned. Even a little miffed that you're going to be paying a whole 15 cents more for that tree in taxes.



As you can see in that Fox News picture, clearly people will be up in arms. I mean, how dare you raise the taxes... even if it's by god damn pocket change you probably wouldn't give to a homeless guy. But that's not the point. You don't want to give it to the tax man... nevermind that most tree growers are in support of the tax

Akin to similar programs that promote milk, beef and cotton, the Christmas tree program will impose on U.S. domestic producers and importers an initial fee of 15 cents per tree.

A 12-member board will direct the money to generic ads and other promotions, as well as research. The promotions, according to the USDA, will present "a favorable image of Christmas trees to the general public," with the intent of improving the public "perception" of Christmas trees and, hence, their sales.

"We have good reason to believe it will be successful for our industry," Betty Malone, an Oregon tree farmer and president of Christmas Tree Promotion Now, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "We looked at what other industries have done, and how successful they've been."

After three years, growers and importers will vote on whether to continue the program.

You read that correctly. They're putting this tax in so that they can raise the money to create ads to promote the image of Christmas trees and thus increase sales. The whole notion of spending money on adverts to boost the image of a fucking Christmas tree is pretty ridiculous.

Then again, the whole idea of Christmas trees itself is pretty ridiculous as well. But hey, I'm sure they have to rehabilitate the image of Christmas tress. You know, ever since all those electrical fires fueled by all that pitch and the choking hazards of pine needles as they dry up and fly in the living room air.

So the plan, if you are even drunk enough for it to make sense, is to increase the price of an item for the sole reason of encouraging people to buy more of it. And if that's not stupid enough, try raising it by a whopping 15 cents and see how much you can get.

None of this changes the fact that everyone loses here except the Christmas tree merchants. Which brings up a good question, if this is a corporate handout, then why did Obama back down from it?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is going to delay implementation and revisit a proposed new 15 cent fee on fresh-cut Christmas trees, sources tell ABC News. The fee, requested by the National Christmas Tree Association in 2009, was first announced in the Federal Registry yesterday and has generated criticism of President Obama from conservative media outlets.

Obama sure caved on that mother fucker pretty fast. I probably should be dissing him some more but perhaps caving on this is a good thing as it was an all around stupidly bad plan from the get go. Otherwise I would be complaining that the government backed down on a corporate handout because of public pressure.

Though maybe I should take this moment to come clean here and reveal that it's me. I'm actually a big Christmas lobbyist and this is just a situation of Goldman blowing a Christmas tree bubble. Damn you Merrill Grinch!

Don't Christmas trees cost like 70-80 bucks? How much does a 15 cents tax really effect that? it's like an 0.2% tax on something to get people to buy more Christmas trees. If I did a bunch of work on something and started selling it and got offered a deal to minimally impact my existing customers in order to reach even more customers, there's no way at all I wouldn't take it.

This whole thing is just stupid. I literally can not imagine a less important issue than a $0.15 tax on Christmas trees. Maybe a $0.14 on Christmas trees would be one. But you get what I mean.

It's just sad that Obama is spending any of his political capital he has been saving for years on a Christmas tree tax. Or maybe this is just because he doesn't want to appear soft on Christmas.

President Obama today announced that he planned to fully withdraw all troops from the Global War on Christmas by the deadline of June 31, 2013.

Then again, this $0.15 tax on Christmas trees impacts the poor more than the rich, much like any other flat tax. #Classwarfare

But maybe poor people just shouldn't be having Christmas anyway. How about you LEARN TO SPEND WISELY, POORS! If you forgo Christmas for 100 years, you might be able to afford a car to get to work and a house in a decent school district. Way to learn, morons.

So yeah. Way to spend your time on a pointless subject, Obama.