Aug. 10, 2020
HARRISBURG – With Pennsylvania restaurant owners banding together and standing up to the governor last week after his latest restaurant restrictions continued to cripple these businesses, Rep. Gary W. Day (R-Berks/Lehigh) has introduced restaurant pandemic assistance legislation as an option to help businesses stay afloat.
House Bill 2789 would enable restaurants required to operate at less than 100% capacity due to restrictions imposed by the governor to apply to the Department of Revenue and, if approved, convert an amount of sales tax collected from their sales of food and beverage into a grant. Any amount of sales tax converted would not have to be repaid by the restaurant. Once restaurants participating in the grant program are able to operate at 100%, they would be ineligible for the program and would resume remitting collected sales tax to the state according to current law.
If these restaurants close, the Commonwealth stands to lose far more revenue than the sales tax on 25% capacity operations of these businesses.
“Restaurant owners across the state are struggling and may not survive the devastation of the Wolf administration’s extreme limitations on their operations,” Day said. “My legislation would allow these businesses to convert their sales tax revenues into grant funds, giving them the help they so desperately need. I truly think this is a viable solution to aid our hurting restaurants, their owners and employees.”
For further information on this bill, visit here.
Representative Gary Day
187th Legislative District
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Media Contact: Abby Krueger
717.260-6617
akrueger@pahousegop.com
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