Opinion: Meals tax will lead to fewer people eating at local restaurants

By Ben Baldwin

The economic illiteracy of this Board is astounding. Based on this budget, you need a lesson, so here goes:

Inflation is when you have too much money chasing after too little goods. For example, here in Prince William County, we have an inflated housing market.

My home saw an assessment increase of nearly twelve percent for this year, which was more than double what my house was assessed the year before. That becomes a problem when interest rates start rising.

Rising interest rates curtail inflation by making it too costly to borrow or buy. When people stop buying things–like houses–the value of the item you wish to sell goes down. As more and more people try to sell to get whatever price they can, the value of what they want to sell further perpetuates the spiral.

This is known as a market crash.

This will be the 13th year in a row residential tax bills have increased. Thirteen years ago was 2009.

Since nobody on this Board held office in 2009, a history lesson is in order. The year before was the 2008 financial collapse, which was caused by an inflated, over-speculated housing market that was made worse when interest rates started rising. You’re running headlong into the same wall we hit over a decade ago, pretending the wall isn’t even there.

While you plan to raise property taxes, you also want to impose a 4% meals tax on every restaurant in the County. When questioned on the potential economic issues of raising the price for a family to go out and eat, a budget analyst for the County said, “if you don’t want to pay the tax, don’t eat out at restaurants.”

That’s the point.

When you tax something–like a restaurant–you force the consumer to decide whether they want to eat at Montclair Family Restaurant, Zandra’s Taqueria, the Electric Palm, or the Harbor Grille. When they choose not to go out to eat, those restaurants lose revenue.

When they lose revenue, they cut back to save money. When they can’t do that anymore, they go out of business.

Why are the residents and businesses of this county being put in this position? Because this Board can’t help itself and increases spending year after year after year.

You are writing checks that you will very soon not be able to cash because you are taxing into oblivion the very revenue sources you need to function. You have consistently shown an inability to be prudent with the people’s money.

You need to humble yourself and curtail your grandiose, misbegotten plans of economic justice. You need to stop treating the people of this county like a piggy bank you can break open whenever you see fit. You need to listen to us.

And if you can’t do that, then you need to go.

Ben Baldwin is a Prince William County resident who ran for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2021.