Kentucky Center for Economic Policy: Taxing Groceries in Kentucky Would Hurt Low-Income Families, Weaken Revenue Growth
ITEP Work in ActionLower-income families therefore receive the most benefit from the exemption for groceries. Repealing it would disproportionately increase the share of income they pay in taxes, making Kentucky’s tax system more regressive than it already is. The chart below from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), illustrating the estimated distributional impact of including groceries in the Kentucky sales tax base, shows that families in the bottom 20 percent would see their taxes increase as a share of income by 10 times more than families in the top 1 percent.