The return of the Christmas-tree tax? « Hot Air: "The domestic fresh-cut Christmas-tree industry certainly hopes so — and heck, who can blame them, really? So many other niche special interest groups, particularly in the agribusiness sector, have successfully managed to rent-seek for federal protection from consumer choice in the free market — be it in the form tax credits, or import quotas, or direct payouts, or what have you — why wouldn’t these guys try to get a piece of the action?
Back in 2011, the Obama administration announced that they planned to succumb to the Christmas-tree industry’s years of lobbying and implement a “fee” on growers that would pay for a specialized marketing program for American-produced Christmas trees. The industry really wanted the federal government to charge and collect the “fee,” rather than collect the money from amongst themselves, in order to thwart any tree companies that might not want to pay in to what the industry believed should be a group effort (even if they had to force it out of ‘em!) in promoting freshly-cut domestic trees over artificial and foreign-sourced trees."
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