The Pet Food Institute expressed its appreciation to the West Virginia, USA, Senate Agriculture Committee for amending a bill to remove petfood tax provisions.
The Senate Agriculture Committee passed an amended version of S.B. 479 that removed the petfood tax provisions, which would have funded a spay and neuter assistance program with supplemental money from the fee increase on petfood retailers and distributors, the group says. Instead, the bill now funds the program through the general state budget, and supplemental revenue is raised through an income tax refund checkoff.
As part of its initiative to fight the petfood tax provisions, the Pet Food Institute launched a Facebook campaign called "Save our Pets from Onerous Taxes," which the group says received the support of more than 1,300 Facebook users within the first two days of being created.
“It is not fair to tax responsible pet owners to fix a situation they did not create. We are grateful that the concerns of West Virginians were heard and that the unfair tax provisions were stripped from S.B. 479,” said Duane Ekedahl, president. “Every state that has debated a proposal to tax petfood to fund spay/neuter programs ultimately rejected a tax on pet food. Now West Virginia joins that list.”