Whole Foods Has to Rescind Its Rather Taxing Promotion Planned for Wednesday

Late last week, maybe you read somewhere that Whole Foods Market was kindly offering to eat your sales tax on any purchases made Wednesday (before you head over to the Dallas Tea Party, maybe). Well, sorry, but nope — Whole Foods can’t actually do that, laws and all. Which is why, over the weekend, Whole Foods PR peoples had to send to local media the following oops-our-bad penned by the chain’s executive marketing director:

“Hey folks. Scott Simons here from Whole Foods
Market. We came up with this idea as a fun promotion in light of
the current economy, and frankly, we didn’t know that this was
potentially a questionable offer, so we unfortunately have to rescind the offer
for tax day. We’re sorry for any confusion and appreciate
your understanding. It was a fun idea, but unfortunately not something we
can follow through on. It was fun while it lasted! Have
a great weekend.”

Update: I spoke this morning with Karen Lukin, who’s in charge of Dallas’s media and community relations, concerning the cancellation of the promotion. She offered this further explanation: “The question came up, ‘Is this an appropriate thing to do tax-wise?’ and we said, ‘You know, let’s cancel the promotion, then we’re safe.’ It wasn’t a TABC-specific issue. Companies do this all the time, and as long as the tax is paid, one might assume it’s fine, but its the state of Texas, and we want to make sure we’re playing by the letter of the law, and we thought it would be best to cancel it.”