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Show Local Citizens Open Fight Fight against the proposed "death tax" on Utah's chain stores stor-es No 2 on the Utah ballot-gathered ballot-gathered force this week with the formation of the Sugarhouse Citizen's Cit-izen's Committee Against No 2. composed of representative Sugarhouse Su-garhouse citizens, including executives exe-cutives and employees of .iucrar-house .iucrar-house chain stores, the group is headed by Alan Seegmiller, J. C Penney Company, chairman; and Russell Shurileff, Safeway Stores, vice-president. Function of the committee will be to educate .ill consumers, including in-cluding farmers, wage-earners, property-owners and other interested inter-ested individual, to the drastic provisions of the "death tax" so they will be able to vote intelligently intelli-gently on the issue next November Novem-ber 3, Mr. Seegmiller said. L He explained that No. 2 will come before Utah voters as the first legislative enactment ever to be successfully challenged by the people under the state referendum refer-endum law. More than 54,000 voters vot-ers signed petitions which suspend ed tne tax pending a vote of the people on it. "The Sugarhouse committee includes in-cludes prominent citizens who have no special interest in chain stores, but who have volunteered to fight the "death tax" as a matter of principle, Mr. Seegmiller Seegmill-er said, Chain store personnel are participating as individuals and in no sence as employees of the affected firms. Their jobs are in jeopardy and they know that this vicious tax scheme will raise prices for everybody.' "The unfairness of the proposal propos-al is obivious. It is cleverly worded word-ed so as to affect onlv 123 out of mote than 6000 stores in Utah. J. C. Penney, Sears Roebuck, Safeway, among others, are penalized, pen-alized, while all competitors, including in-cluding individual merchants, the big-contract chains, chain oil stations and chains of less than 10 stores, are exempt. "No. 2 would place an extra tax up to $500 per store per year on every existing store of the affected af-fected companies, thus raising prices immediately for comsum-ers. comsum-ers. On top or the $500 tax, No. 2 would impose a prohibitive tax up to $5000 per year per store on every new store, even if a store moved from an old building to a larger one where the public may be served better." "Stores wear out, just as shoes, automobiles and shopping districts dis-tricts wear out. Competitors could move tax free, yet chain stores would be frozen right where they are. No business can stand still. It either goes ahead or it dies. That is why No. 2 is a death tax'." |