Dems settle on plan to raise alcohol taxes

After weeks of the legislative session and a year after their plans to hike the state alcohol tax fell apart, it looks like the left-wing legislators pushing for an increase in the gas tax have settled on a plan as outlined in  House Bill 417 that “would retain the current tax levied on the volume of alcohol sold, and add a 6% sales tax to alcohol purchased in restaurants, stores, and other places that sell alcohol to the public.”

As RGF wrote recently in an article distributed statewide, New Mexico’s alcohol taxes are hardly low and as a whole New Mexicans are not particularly big drinkers. But, in classic New Mexico fashion, this bill dramatically increases prices for all drinkers and since it is a 6% tax at the point of sale it is yet another “regressive” tax levied on hard working New Mexicans.

This is a newly filed bill with a long way to go in the session, but with agreement among these bickering so-called “progressives” it has a path to likely passage.