The shoe tax is costly; as high as 67.5 percent. U.S. footwear companies paid .9 billion in duties to the U.S. government in 2007, more than the duties paid on imports of virtually any other single type of product.
· The U.S. tariff system, with respect to footwear, is regressive in that it charges higher rates of duty for lower-valued merchandise. As such, footwear duties act as a hidden, regressive tax on low- and middle-income American households, including working families with children, who spend a larger share of their disposable income on basic necessities, like shoes.
· Because duties are subject to the same distribution mark-ups as any cost, the .9 billion in import duties translates into a -5 billion tax each year on hardworking American families.
· The depression-era shoe tax originated in the 1930 to protect a manufacturing sector that no longer exists today.
· Over the last 20 years, U.S. footwear production has practically disappeared. The few remaining U.S. footwear manufacturers successfully focus on niche items differentiated by quality, brand, specialized purpose, or other non-price elements.
· The Affordable Footwear Act does not apply to the remaining footwear types still manufactured domestically, thus U.S. manufacturers do not oppose it. The shoe types addressed by the Affordable Footwear Act are no longer produced in America, yet are still subject to the regressive, expensive shoe tax.
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