Rep. Zupkus: New ‘Plastic Bag’ Tax Starts August 1st
I want to remind the residents of Bethany, Cheshire, and Prospect that a new state law on placing a ten cent tax on plastic bags takes effect on August 1st.
The legislation, Public Act 19-117, which was a section of the state budget, creates a statewide plastic bag fee of .10 cents per “single-use checkout bag” that must be collected by retailers making sales in Connecticut.
The collectors of this fee include a “store” defined as any retailer who is registered for Connecticut sales tax that sells goods directly to the public and maintains a retail location in Connecticut that provides to its customers a plastic bag with a thickness of less than four mils that is provided by a store to a customer at the point of sale.
The 10 cent fee for plastic bags is remitted to the state, and those charges will appear separately on a sales receipt. The money collected from the new plastic bag tax will go into the state’s General Fund. The new tax is projected to bring in an estimated $27 million per year in the budget.
If a store makes a decision to stop using plastic bags on their own and then charges for paper bags, under the law they may keep those fees.
Additionally, municipalities may enact or enforce local ordinances concerning paper checkout bags, including, but not limited to, enabling each store to charge a fee for any such bag distributed to a customer. Any municipality that charges for a bag will be subject to sales tax. If a municipality were to charge its own plastic bag fee, it would be in addition to the state plastic bag fee.