New 8.25% Sales Tax

The new state budget is onerous enough overall, but I am particularly incensed by the 1.25% sales tax (“Twinkie Tax”?) increase and the resultant exorbitant San Diego County rate of 8.25%. This is sure to reduce consumer spending even further, especially since state sales tax is not federally tax deductible.

I will not buy a new car next month as planned or at all as long as this tax rate prevails; my nonessential expenditures will be kept to a minimum. And if it has been difficult to attract new business and industry to California up to now, this new repressive atmosphere ought to make them really avoid us like the plague.

I can see no justification for this budget, don’t believe the sales tax increase will, indeed, be temporary, and do not accept the premise that this is simply “the price one has to pay for living in California.” I have lived in California for 60 years and never in that time has my belief in the credibility of the Legislature been so eroded as by the adoption of this budget and the way in which it was done.

SANDORD L. MARGOLIES, San Diego