Tattoo artists, manicurists, real-estate brokers, tanning-bed operators and other small-business owners promised yesterday to fight Gov. Bob Taft's new sales-tax proposal, arguing that it would kill businesses already suffering the worst year in recent memory.
"They tried to do this in Arizona and all the tanning operators got together and sued the state and they won,'' said Skip Peters, owner of Sundash Tanning & Nail Center in Hilliard. He said sales have dropped nearly 30 percent since 2001.
Business hasn't been the same for Stacey Redman's East Side nail salon since terrorists slammed airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, she said.
On really slow days, Redman gives one manicure. For months, she's been discounting prices to keep customers coming back.
"Getting your nails done isn't a necessity,'' said Redman, who owns the Palace Nail Salon, 1463 E. Livingston Ave. "It's a treat, and all businesses can do is run specials.''
Redman and other small-business owners, already reeling from a faltering economy, yesterday called Taft's $2.3 billion tax proposal a death blow. Under the plan, Ohio's 5 percent sales tax would be levied on numerous services currently not covered, including dry cleaning, tanning, interior decorating, landscaping, local telephone service and cable television. Tickets to movies, concerts and professional sports events also would be taxed.
"He should just put slot machines in racetracks,'' said Linda Zoundas, an interior designer with Lazarus at Easton Town Center. "There have to be other ways to raise money than to tax the people who have had the worst year of their lives.
"It's going to have to be passed on to the clients. We'll have to raise our prices.''
Mark Hawkins, co-owner of the Tanning Company on the Northwest Side, said his business is down about 20 percent so far this year. The decline followed the terrorist attack of 2001. Many of his customers who typically tanned before vacations stopped traveling.
"Since we've never come fully back, I'm concerned that any additional cost is going to keep people away,'' he said.
After 10 years in business, Hawkins, 42, started paramedic school this month so he could supplement his income with a second job.
Like many other small-business owners, Hawkins is skeptical that state funding of public schools would have to be cut without the additional revenue, as Taft has said.
"If I really, truly believed it had to be one or the other, I'd say pay for education, but I don't really believe it is down to that,'' Hawkins said. "Like when Taft reshot a travel ad to include himself -- that cost how many thousands? -- and now he wants us to believe it's come to this.
"I just feel there is so much waste in government that if they were really sincere, they could work on other cuts.''
Peters, 59, doesn't believe the only options are to expand the sales tax or cut education.
"The old saying goes, 'Somehow they will manage,' '' he said. "There is always extra money to be found.''
"Gov. Taft is playing a chess game,'' said Columbus real-estate broker J.P. Faulkner. "What he's asking the people to do is to lose the bishop and lose a pawn. He sets it up so someone will ultimately lose and then he throws out the hot-button issue of education. But I'm not so sure that the school systems are hurting for money. I think there are far bigger issues in the education system that money can't solve.''
Promising to be among the first pickets at the Statehouse, Faulkner questioned why Taft would want to mess with real estate, one industry in which consumers still have confidence.
One tattoo-shop owner, who asked to remain anonymous, said Taft "can take a hike,'' promising he will not collect the new sales tax.
But another tattoo artist said he will have little choice but to raise rates, acknowledging the state is in dire straits.
"Personally, I think it sucks,'' said Tim Miller of Tim's Tattoo Studio, 3915 E. Broad St. "But if it's the law, it's the law. You can pay the tax man or go to jail.''
Miller, who charges a minimum of $50, an average of $125 and up to $7,000 for tattoos, said, "We'll just have to raise prices of tattoos'' to make up for a sales tax.
Several merchants said it would be impossible for the Department of Taxation to enforce sales-tax collections on cash transactions -- from parking and massages to tattoos and tavern cover charges.
"Good luck,'' said Gus Bell, manager of Victory's Bar in German Village. "It would be absurd. I don't know how (Taft's) going to monitor it.''
Bell said weekend cover charges, which range from $3 to $5, likely would rise, turning people away. There would be a corresponding drop in liquor sales, he said, meaning less taxes collected on alcohol. "It's a double-edged sword.''
A few consumers called new sales taxes a necessary evil in hard times.
"People who can afford to pay for movies can afford the sales tax,'' Donald Cooper of Dublin said as he walked into Chicago yesterday at Lennox Town Center's AMC Theater.
The retired Ohio State University professor said, "I don't like it, but I think it's necessary. By law, we must balance the budget.''
Aware that Taft and Republican legislators won re-election in November by criticizing "tax-hiking'' Democrats, Cooper said, "Frankly, it gives me some pleasure. Republican legislators messed everything up.''
"These are 'tax reforms,' '' he said, mocking the governor's label.