How sweet it is…probably has nothing to do with the tax

OLYMPIA — Tax protestors with a sweet tooth rejoice. You may have plenty of sweet treats to enjoy without paying a sales tax.

You may have to commit your favorite “tax-exempt” sweets to memory, though. Unless you know the ingredients, you may have trouble figuring what’s on or off the state Department of Revenue’s list of taxable candies. The department’s preliminary list is just out, and in each of the following pairs of items, one is taxable and one is exempt. Can  you guess which is which between:

Good and Plenty or Mike and Ike..

Milky Way bars or 3 Musketeers bars.

Kit-Kat bars or Hershey bars.

In each of the above pairings, the first one is exempt and the second taxable. The main difference is the use of flour in the creation of those treats, Mike Gowrylow,  a Department of Revenue spokesman said: Those that use flour aren’t candy under the law.

Many of the “not candy” items on the department’s exempt list are licorice: black or red, bits, nibbles, whips or sticks. Apparently, licorice is made with flour.

So if you always thought of that box of pink and white “Good and Plenty” as candy when you bought it at the concession stand when you were a kid attending a matinee, turns out you were wrong. And while most jelly beans are candy, and taxable, the licorice flavored assortment of Jelly Belly’s is exempt.

The department has posted a list of some 3,000 sweets and their tax status. It can be found here. 

The list is preliminary, Gowrylow said “We’re going to try to refine it through the rest of this month.

For a list of the currently exempt treats, go inside the blog