This story was written by Terry Schrimscher for the Trussville Tribune.
TRUSSVILLE, Ala. (TRIBUNE) — Alabama Rep. Danny Garrett of Trussville has written a bill to eliminate the grocery tax statewide. He plans to introduce the legislation in the next legislative session.
“I carried the original grocery tax reduction a couple years ago, and we took 50% of the tax, the 4%, we took 2 cents of that off, over a 2 year period,” Garrett said, speaking to The Tribune. “At the time, we said that we were probably headed down the path [to] eventually eliminating it all,” he said.
“And so, in advance of the session, I’ve already drafted a bill to do just that—to eliminate the remaining two cents,” Garrett said.
Garrett has long been an advocate for cutting grocery taxes in Alabama. He proposed a cut from 4% to 3% in 2023 and a cut from 3% to 2% in 2025.
Alabama is one of the last remaining states in the U.S. with a sales tax on groceries.
Due to the quadrennium, Garrett said he could not yet pre-file the bill for the next session. A quadrennium is the four-year period tied to a specific legislature. Because this is an election year, a bill cannot be filed for the next session until all new members are in place.
“The bill’s ready, and we’ll drop it, and I expect that the Legislature will take it up at the next session,” Garrett said.
Both major-party gubernatorial candidates, Tuberville and Jones, have expressed support for eliminating the grocery tax during their campaigns.
“I know everybody is beating that drum now for the election,” Garrett said. He added that this has been a goal since starting down this path.
Garrett said he has been asked how he plans to replace the revenue, which is used for education, if the tax is abolished and if that meant the Legislature would have to raise another tax to replace it.
“Our plan would be that we budgeted accordingly so that we would not have to do that,” Garrett said.
He added that the bill, like the previous bills, contains language to protect taxpayers at the local level. The bill contains language to prevent local governments from enacting a local tax to capture funds consumers were already accustomed to paying.
“We didn’t want the locals to just say we’ll raise our tax two cents,” Garrett said.
The previous cuts, in 2023 and 2025, passed without opposition in both houses of the Legislature. In May, Gov. Kay Ivey approved a grocery tax holiday that eliminated the 2% rate for a short period of time. That tax holiday expired in July.
Garrett said the tax cuts apply broadly to grocery food items. The next regular legislative session begins in February. Bills for the new legislature after the quadrennium can be pre-filed in December.
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