We don't need to tax Christmas trees, they can pool their cash and run ads on their own. Also, on the dark side, this is a tax on a specific item related to a religious celebration, I'm a touch leery of that, you don't tax Easter Candy Chocolate Eggs you tax candy or chocolate or sugar. You tax candles not specifically Votive or Hanukkah candles... I'm not sure what the wording is on the tax so they may have done it right or wrong but it is something one needs to be cautious about. I also doubt the NCTA has a monopoly on growing Christmas trees and odds are they want the tax on everyone if they're pushing for it because they don't want to collect the cash themselves while non-members don't pay but reap the rewards, or maybe they want to compete better against artificial trees and want a gov't stamp of approval while talking about how much greener it is. Either way, I don't believe such a tax is 'evil' or 'anti-Christmas' but it is a good example of things the gov't doesn't need to be getting involved with. At least with subsidies of, for instance, dairy, a case can be made... and for a rare change I'll skip making it for the sake of brevity... that cows represent an effective calorie vault for drought and emergency, several hundreds pounds of beef plus the ~10,000+ pounds of silage they'd consume in a year versus a considerably smaller calorie output, available during a real mega-crisis like a volcano eruption destroying the year's grain production. I'm not fond of agricultural subsidies or energy subsidies but the case for them is fairly decent, and thus a case for government involvement, food and fuel are very much an area of legitimate government interest... Christmas trees really are not.