FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CDNC blasts Republican Meal Plan Tax
RALEIGH, NC--A new Republican sales tax on students is coming to university dining halls across the state starting January 1st, 2014.   Over the summer, Republican majorities in the General Assembly, led by Speaker Tillis and President Pro Temp Berger, shifted a major sales tax burden onto the backs of students by ending the meal plan exemption.  This week, The Daily Tar Heel reported that on top of the 6.75 percent sales tax, UNC students will be subjected to additional taxation at the county-level.  The College Democrats of North Carolina (CDNC) spoke out in a release today:
 “The Tillis-Berger scheme will cost students and their parents hundreds of additional dollars due to their decision to end the sales tax exemption on universities’ meal plans,” said CDNC President Louis Duke. “Republicans are alarmingly out-of-touch with the needs and financial hardships faced by far too students and their families. Whether it was their threat to tax parents if their children voted where they went to school, tuition increases due Republican cuts to public education, or this new meal plans tax, Republicans simply don’t get it.  For years, Democrats made access to quality, affordable public education a top priority and it’s sad to see Republicans turn their back on that legacy. Come election time, however, they’re learn a valuable lesson and the College Democrats will be the ones doing the educating.”

 BACKGROUND
Under Republican tax shift, movie ticket prices also on the rise
Republican-backed tax expansion starts in January and will draw new revenue from groups such as nonprofit theaters that had been exempt.  The new 7 percent tax means a ticket that was $30 would increase to $32. Some box offices will sell tickets at a base price plus tax and others plan to wrap the cost into the total ticket price, said John Ellis, managing director of the Diana Wortham Theatre in Asheville.  At for-profit companies, like movie theaters, tickets prices are also going up with the new tax that replaces an old 1 percent tax, Ellis said.  The expansion is part of a GOP plan to lower tax rates by getting revenue from new sources. Museums, theaters and nonprofits had been exempt from excise taxes. Ellis said the change has “little rationale” when new tax breaks for big businesses are factored in “It is difficult to swallow that nonprofits are being taxed in order to give for-profit businesses a tax break,” he said. – [11/17/13]
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