A hearing on a bill to suspend the business privilege tax on food and medicine for a year drew surprisingly little testimony today.

Sponsor, Sen. Jesse Lujan is seeking a one-year waiver on the widely purchased items to hopefully give consumers a much-needed break.

The lone representative from the executive branch was Jennifer Untalan of the Department of Revenue and Taxation, who was called in last minute to provide senators with a projected impact of the tax holiday on government coffers.

She estimates about $40 million but took no position on the bill itself.

Still, Lujan says the governor is well aware of how hard inflation is hitting the community and said as much in an op-ed piece released this week, which Lujan read.

"and quote, 'no one can deny that a dollar just doesn't stretch as far as it used to, everywhere you look prices are up, wages are flat and people are doing more and more to earn less and less. And despite all their efforts the administration knows as a community we are not where we used to be economically, and there is still so much further to go,' Unquote. So the administration when faced with reality, faced with the truth, knows full well our people need help," he said.

The only others to show up were sisters Melanie Gabriel and Natasha Hebert of Rexall Drugs who testified in Support of a temporary waiver of the BPT, especially on medication.

"Things just add up so quickly, and then on top of that we have the five percent, so there's times when we're looking at some of these medications that we're bringing in and I'm looking at the cost and we're losing money just to bring it in for the patient," she said. "And we do make that decision sometimes, but having the removal of this five percent gets us closer to at least breaking even."

However some senators, like Joanne Brown, were skeptical that not everyone would pass the tax savings on to consumers.

"Unfortunately, we're gonna have some businesses are gonna pocket the money, and when and if the time comes when the government's gonna be on its reality taxes are gonna be put back in place and the increase to that item's gonna be even more," she said.

But Lujan says he's heard from businesses that do intend to pass on the savings, and even reflect the amount in the customers' receipts.

Late this afternoon Rev and Tax director Dafne Shimizu walked back the $40 million estimated impact saying in a letter to Chairman Senator Joe San Agustin that, “It is not possible to carve out BPT data for medicine or food and the number which was provided is not representative of BPT data, is subject to error, and to clarify, DRT is not able to provide an estimate of BPT based on actual BPT data.”