This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2005, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Dave Iltis is not a tax accountant nor an economist, but for the past few months, he's tried to play one for the Legislature's Tax Reform Task Force.

Iltis, the editor of a local biking magazine, http://www.cyclingutah.com">Cycling Utah, in June presented the task force with a detailed plan to remove the state's so-called most-hated tax - the sales tax on groceries.

"I've always thought the tax on food is a horribly unfair tax," says Iltis. "I wondered why Utah, of all places, has it."

Unlike hundreds of thousands of other Utahns who loathe the food tax, (polls regularly find a wide majority oppose it), Iltis actually did something. The Salt Lake City resident searched the Internet and newspaper articles for tax data, crunched it and started peppering the tax reform panel, the governor's office and the Tax Commission with e-mails.

The effort had an impact, apparently. The reform panel went so far as to run the most accurate sales tax figures available through the bicyclist's concept, which holds the $250 million loss in state revenues could be made up with a modest increase in the non-food sales tax.

Last month, however, Iltis was pushed into the background as legislative leaders stumbled over each other to devise their own plans to eliminate the sales tax on groceries.

Task Force member Rep. Steve Urquhart, R-St. George, acknowledges that a plan developed during a House Republican leadership bull session owes much to Iltis. "It's tough to follow the genealogy of ideas. But he had put a considerable amount of thought into those proposals. They were very well reasoned."

Linda Hilton and the Coalition of Religious Communities organized a petition campaign for the repeal of the food tax and has challenged a lawmaker-any lawmaker- to sponsor legislation. Iltis' plan is similar to concepts floated over the years, she says. "Dave is the one who resurrected the thing and fine-tuned it."

Ultimately, if the proposal is embraced and passes, any citizen advocates will be forgotten, Hilton says. "This isn't going to be 'some citizen's' plan. This is going to be a concept that is [House Speaker] Greg Curtis' unique, very new idea."

Urquhart, however, accepts grandstanding as part of the political process: "It shouldn't surprise anyone that politics is part of politics. The process is working - we have varied ideas on the table."

Hilton agrees: "They can call it what they want, I just want the tax removed from food."

Still, the politics of ego is crucial to driving change. Thus, the food tax proposal that started with Urquhart, then became the Curtis proposal, now the House plan, has stirred up intraparty competition in the form of a Senate plan.

The House plan would remove the tax on food, but make up much of the loss in revenues through a small boost in the tax on non-food items. (Sound familiar?)

"We like politics. We discuss politics often," Urquhart says of the House's informal tax brainstorming session. "This was an idea we got excited about and realizing time was short we threw it out there."

The Senate plan, of course, one-ups the House. President John Valentine proposed to remove the sales tax on food without any offsetting hike in other taxes. It would give taxpayers a whopping $250 million tax cut.

Though the Senate idea is simple and Utah is enjoying budget surpluses, many observers say Valentine's plan won't fly.

"Sales tax supports too many programs. We can't take that big a cut," Urquhart says.

Hilton said she fears elimination of the food tax with no counterbalance will whip up a frenzy of opposition that could sink any serious food tax change. "[Valentine] knows how to punch the special interests' buttons," she says. "It'll never happen."

That works to the advantage of a compromise plan, a $75 sales tax refund per person to poor Utahns. The plan, embraced by many lawmakers as safe, will leave out many working families.

Task Force co-chairman Sen. Curt Bramble supports neither the House nor Senate plan because they don't address the problem of small towns that depend heavily on the food sales tax to fund government.

Only the food tax refund idea has no hidden problems, he says. "It feels good to remove the sales tax on food. But it is a very complex issue."

It will come as no surprise that Iltis already has a proposal to hold these grocery tax dependent towns harmless, and he doesn't care whose name goes on it.

"I'm just very happy the idea moved forward. It wouldn't have gone anywhere if Urquhart and Curtis hadn't put it forward."