The petition “Medical Patient Tax Relief Act” has been submitted to county registrars statewide. There were over 100,000 signatures on the petition. The Alliance verified over 66,000 registered voter signatures before they stopped counting, as 55,234 verified registered voter signatures are required to become a ballot measure on the upcoming November ballot.
Should the NV Secretary of State approve the petition, voters will be given the opportunity to eliminate sales and use tax on home medical equipment required by sick, injured and dying Nevada citizens. Examples of this are quadriplegics using electric wheelchairs, infants on ventilators, respiratory and cardiac patients using oxygen, and many types of mobility devices. Although the ballot measure must be passed twice, dying hospice patients would no longer be taxed for their home hospital beds, oxygen or other equipment necessary to sustain their comfort and dignity in their final weeks or days.
Nevada is one of the few states in the country that charges sales and use tax on home medical equipment and is doing so despite a 1990 Nevada Supreme Court decision to exempt all oxygen administration devices, calling the only court case on this issue invalid because it was “unpublished.” Instead, the NV Dept. of Taxation has chosen to interpret the statutes in a greedy and inhumane manner causing such hardships as a quadriplegic having to pay up to $1,600 in taxes for his electric wheelchair. People in need of home medical equipment suffer from their injury or disease, their medical expenses, and have lost their jobs and subsequent income because they are unable to work. Now, the NV Dept. of Taxation literally wants to add insult to injury by taxing medical equipment that their physician has ordered and they cannot live without.
“In 1996, Nevadans voted by a large majority to exempt prosthetics and orthotics from sales and use tax. I believe this compassion and empathy will again be shown by the citizens of this state with a yes vote on this ballot measure in November” said Doug Bennett, officer for the Alliance, to the High Desert Advocate.
