Beginning this semester the price of all meal plans on campus will be increased by four percent in order to pay three years worth of back taxes. All higher education institutions in the state were exempt from paying a four percent tax increase on meal plans, but the exemption ended three years ago without announcement from the state’s Department of Revenue. Eugene Dial, vice president for Student Affairs and Enrollment Services, estimates that the University could owe around $100,000 in back taxes to the state from the three years of student meal plan sales taxes that the school was not told to collect.

“The school wasn’t notified,” said Brenda Haskins, executive director of auxiliary services. “We weren’t even aware that we were supposed to be paying.” Dial said the situation was not brought to the school’s attention until last summer.

In order to pay these taxes, the cost of all student meal plans will be increased by four percent beginning this semester. All higher education institutions in the state offering meal plans have been asked to pay these back taxes, despite not being notified that their exemption had been dropped.

The state originally mandated that schools begin collecting these taxes in the fall of 2008, but in a letter to the University, the Louisiana Department of Revenue wrote that the department had received several concerns that there wasn’t enough time to announce the tax increase to students and faculty. In response, the department deferred the collection date until the beginning of the 2009 spring semester. “It’s unfortunate,” Dial said. “We wish we could have known earlier because we like for students to know how much the entire school year will cost students ahead of time.”

Students who paid for meal plans this semester had mixed reactions to the tax increase. Josh Gonzales, a pre-engineering freshman from Napoleonville, said that the tax increase was not really significant to him, while Sarah Schultz, a nursing freshman from Destrehan, said that she’s paying more for her meal plan this semester even though she reduced her number of meals.

Dial said the meal plan tax increase will be reduced to one percent beginning with the Fall 2009 semester.