Tennesseans For Fair Taxation

Tennesseans for Fair Taxation (TFT) is a Tennessee political advocacy group advocating tax reform, particularly at the state level.

As a grassroots group of generally low and moderate income families, Tennesseans for Fair Taxation is allied with state public employee and schoolteacher groups, along with faith-based organizations and good government groups, in establishing a progressive, broad-based state income tax as part of a larger tax modernization package that would also repeal the food tax and reduce the sales tax. This group notes that Tennessee is shown by almost all objective measures to have one of the lowest per capita level of taxes of the fifty U.S. states but that the tax share is disproportionately placed upon poorer people. This is because the majority of state tax revenues in Tennessee are derived from a sales tax, which applies to food, clothing, furniture, car parts, and other necessities, but not private school tuition, real estate investments, attorney fees, or stocks and bonds (except for interest earned and dividends, which are taxed at 6 percent under the Hall income tax, Tennessee being the only state with this provision). In Tennessee, food for human consumption is taxed at 5.5% (This was lowered from 6 to 5.5% in January 2008) and most other items of commerce at 7%, with local jurisdictions empowered to add as much as another 2.75% to this, making the overall sales tax rate in many jurisdictions, including the major urban areas, 8.25% on food and 9.75% on other items.