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Show Citizen's Croup Opens Battle On Store Tax I Opening gun in the campaign against the proposed "death tax" on chain stores No. 2 on the November Novem-ber ballot was fired today, when the Citizens' State Committee Against No. 2 charged that the dras. tic proposal would cost thousands of Utah families an average of $120 a year in higher living costs. The charge is contained in a booklet titled "No. 2 is a Tax on You," published by the committee with funds contributed by chain store employees and stockholders. Copies are to be sent to libraries, newspapers and other agencies for public information. By driving out low-price chain store competition, through the device de-vice of an extra tax reaching in some circumstances up to $5,000 a year per store, No. 2 would at once raise the cost of living and lower the standard of living o'f all Utah people, whether customers of chain stores or not, according to the booklet. book-let. Discussing the tax in terms of its effect on specific groups, the booklet book-let declares that: 1 The extra chain store tax would seriously affect companies that now annually buy millions of dollars' worth of Utah agricultural products, much of this for sale in their stores in other states. 2 It would gradually bring about the closing of stores which now produce pro-duce good rental and tax values to the community, and would thus hurt all property values. 3 It would destroy jobs, a fact which would be increasingly serious after the war. 'i It would force upon other taxpayers tax-payers the burden of carrying the tax load now borne by chain stores. The chain store tax, lobbied through the 1941 legislature by a small but powerful group of interested inter-ested parties, and referred to the public through unprecented petition peti-tion bearing 54,000 names, is directed direct-ed against a group of only 123 stores out of the same 6,000 retail stores in Utah. The stores whose destruction is sought by this discriminatory dis-criminatory legislation, according to the book, are the following: J. C. Penney (30 Utah stores), Sears, Roebuck (4), Woolworth (5), Adam Hat, Chandler Shoe, Lerner, Montgomery Ward, National Shirt, J. J. Newberry, Owl Drug (one each) ; Safeway Stores (44) ; Baker's Ehoe, Gamble-Skogmo, W. T. Grant, Thorn McAn, National Dollar. United Unit-ed Cigar (2 each); S. H. Kress (3), Sprouse.Reitz (5), Walgreen Drug (8), and Western Auto Supply (5). The booklet recalls that the chain stores asked for a postponement of the referendum until after the war, so that all merchants could devote themselves to a united war effort, but that this proposal 'fell on deaf ears. |