Letters to the Editor

Letter: Repeal the alcohol tax

In respect to Frank Dahl’s op-ed regarding Proposition 13 (“Alcohol tax will overburden bars”), I want to say that Mr. Dahl is not entirely correct. The establishments aren’t going to absorb this additional cost. In fact, this tax will be passed onto the consumers.

This belief that generating tax money is the responsibility of people who purchase alcohol is unfair and certainly should be repealed. Our mayor and his lackeys have continued to press this initiative over the past few years until they finally got their way. All they did was put a different spin on it to convince the voters that it was the “right thing” to do. They touted that it’s a “modest tax.”

Warning, folks! It won’t end at 5%. History has a habit of repeating itself, and once they get into your wallet, you know the rest of the story. As long as Anchorage continues to have this type of leadership, this tax will rise in time in another initiative. Other U.S. cities have huge tax programs to address the homeless and their numbers continue to rise. Did anyone think that homeless are moving to these cities to benefit from these so-called “social solutions?”

It’s sad that every time there’s a crisis, some misinformed folks believe that more money is always the answer. You think we would have learned a lesson when Sen. Lisa Murkowski, then a legislator from Government Hill, successfully bamboozled the public to add “10 cents a drink” to help the unfortunate. All that tax money ended up in a slush fund and it is still being collected to this day. I certainly agree with Mr. Dahl on one point. Let’s repeal this unfair tax before it begins.

— Mike Krupa

Anchorage

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