Arkansas grocery shoppers, low earners to get tax relief in ‘19

December 30, 2018 at 4:30 a.m. | Updated December 31, 2018 at 4:30 a.m.

by Michael R. Wickline

Then-Gov. Mike Beebe hands then state-Sen. Bobby Glover the pen he used on March 18, 2009, to sign a bill sponsored by Glover reducing the grocery sales tax to 2 percent. The tax dropped to 1.5 percent in 2011, and will be lowered to 0.125 percent starting Tuesday. “It will finish my promise,” Beebe said in a recent interview.
Then-Gov. Mike Beebe hands then state-Sen. Bobby Glover the pen he used on March 18, 2009, to sign a bill sponsored by Glover reducing the grocery sales tax to 2 percent. The tax dropped to 1.5 percent in 2011, and will be lowered to 0.125 percent starting Tuesday. “It will finish my promise,” Beebe said in a recent interview.

The new year brings tax cuts to Arkansans, one for grocery shoppers and the other for lower-income people.

On the first day of 2019, the state sales tax on groceries will drop from 1.5 percent to 0.125 percent and the individual income-tax rates for people who make less than $21,000 a year in taxable income will be cut.

The grocery tax cut is the final step of former Gov. Mike Beebe's bid to make good on a 2006 campaign pledge. He had proposed to incrementally trim the tax from 6 percent to 0.125 percent. Beebe served as governor from 2007-15.

"It will finish my promise," Beebe said in a recent interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The cut for low-income Arkansans will be the second in individual income-tax rates to take effect in recent years.

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