Consumers will be happy because more items, including all perennial vegetables, have been added to the tax-free list. But there may be confusion. Atop the cart there's a bag of bulb food, another of citrus and avocado fertilizer, three bare root fruit trees, a flat of pansies, some close-out daffodil bulbs, three asparagus plants, two artichokes, some rhubarb transplants, an avocado and an olive tree. The clerk begins to ring up the items and charges tax on the bulb food, pansies, daffodils and olive tree. The rest, according to a new law enacted this year, are used for human consumption and are therefore tax free.
Olives are edible.
The primary use for the tree is for landscaping, so it's taxed. On the other hand, if a wholesale grower is selling 1,000 trees to a farmer, that's NOT taxed since the purpose of the trees will obviously be to produce food for humans. So such perennials as fruit, nut and citrus trees, grapevines, rhubarb and asparagus will no longer be taxed. The change in the law, which until this year exempted annual vegetables, and vegetable seeds from taxes, has been a long time coming, Wick says. Now annual vegetables are still exempt, as are perennial vegetables.