Iowa Tax law: Are you eating those pumpkins?

The Iowa Department of Revenue is taxing jack-o'-lanterns this Halloween. The new department policy was implemented after officials decided that pumpkins are used primarily for Halloween decorations, not food, and should be taxed, said Renee Mulvey, the department's spokeswoman.


"We made the change because we wanted the sales tax law to match what we thought the predominant use was," Mulvey said. "We thought the predominant use was for decorations or jack-o'-lanterns."

Previously, pumpkins had been considered an edible squash and exempted from the tax. The department ruled this year that pumpkins are taxable — with some exceptions — if they are advertised for use as jack-'o-lanterns or decorations.

Iowans planning to eat pumpkins can still get a tax exemption if they fill out a form.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071031/ap_on_fe_st/pumpkin_tax&printer=1

A women goes to the nearest grocery store, buys a pumpkin, and she she is planning to give the seeds to me after she has baked them, because I love fresh baked pumpkin seeds.

While she is buying said P, she is charged tax. Oh no she says, I need to fill out the form I am baking a pie. That would be an interesting opening act in "A place called Iowa".

I understand that Iowa is a farm state. Do people use like a 100 pumpkins for a display, there has to be in my opinion some sort of sound reasoning and logic, but I just don't get how the cost of this program will outweigh the benefits unless we are talking about a lot of pumpkins.

I wonder if places, that are not grocery stores will only sell pumpkin, so you cannot go to a grocery store, as pumpkins are not food, but to a "home decoration centre/home garden centre) that charges tax on all items.

Now I am going to have to go get a pumpkin, because I wonder how my province sees them as "food" or decorations. Trust me if Iowa did this, I am sure my province won't be far behind. Or I wonder if Iowa is catching up and the rest of the USA sees pumpkins as not food, but mainly decorations.

I wonder how pumpkins would be advertised?

But I see the states position, it wants the tax, so it goes to the farmers, gee I wonder how many people will fill out the form to say they are going to bake a pie or whatever.

I would like to see the revenues as opposed to the cost of this program, just wondering how this will work out. I wonder also what the cost to the farmers will be and how the state is going to work out the percentage of the pumpkins sold are for decorations. This tax could put some small farmers out of business.

Time-wasters like this make my head hurt! Don't they have better things to worry about than this?!

Maybe they should just tax pie pumpkins (little ones) and not tax the larger ones that are generally used for decorations.

I still had my Wal-mart receipt from the other day when we bought a few pumpkins. They where non-taxable as are all food products in my state...BUT the local pumpkin patch charges sales tax!!

Oh for cripes sakes!

ALL of our groceries are taxed here in Mississippi- and we have one of the highest (if not highest) poverty levels in the country.It's downright rediculous in my opinion.