There is a tax coming on unfinished solid hardwood flooring that you as contractors need to know about and that the NWFA must come out strongly against.
This is a perfect example of how far from reality mill owners and lumber jockeys are from the consumer. No input from the contractor base was put in this decision by the NWFA to support this program. As you and we know contractors are the point of sale and ambassadors of our industry. All this does is make your job harder by forcing you to justify an insanely expensive tax on unfinished solid hardwood.
We believe this is a calculated and manipulative effort on the part of a few manufacturers to choke out unfinished flooring. If the proponents of this tax would instead of treating their products like commodities and sell them based on value received to customer - then they wouldn't be advocating such a regressive tax to propagate what is essentially the problem of a few who have done little but denigrate the market place- all the while beating themselves on the chest about what "leaders" they are. What is most insidious is that the champions of this tax have little to lose- the rest of the industry, by contrast, much.
You might say "WD you produce unfinished enginnered, prefinished engineered and prefinished solid so why do you care?" Well we also produce unfinished solid. Unlike the self serving proponents of this new tax we work with architects and designers across the country and internationally and we know that there are times when solid unfinished is simply going to be the product. We will not abandon this product nor the distributors of our product and the contractors whose livelihood it is to install sand and finish our unfinished solid flooring product. This tax will not further the message of hardwood but will, instead, force more decision makers (consumers - foreigners to the lumber jockeys proposing this nonsense) against solid hardwood. Perhaps this is indeed the grater effort of the self professed "industry leaders" behind this legislation.
We need to arrest this process NOW!
We cannot believe this has gotten this far without a full understanding of the membership of the NWFA. This is a classic example of top down leadership the NWFA has fought against under great leadership lets not lose that mantra by supporting this legislation (tax) now.
WD Flooring
From our handheld to please ignore typos.
http://www.nwfa.org/CHECKOFF%20NWFA%201112.pdf
Leave a public comment against this legislation here: http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketBrowser;rpp=25;po=0;dct=PS;D=AMS-FV-11-0074
edited by wdflooring on 12/29/2013
edited by wdflooring on 12/29/2013
edited by wdflooring on 12/29/2013
This is a perfect example of how far from reality mill owners and lumber jockeys are from the consumer. No input from the contractor base was put in this decision by the NWFA to support this program. As you and we know contractors are the point of sale and ambassadors of our industry. All this does is make your job harder by forcing you to justify an insanely expensive tax on unfinished solid hardwood.
We believe this is a calculated and manipulative effort on the part of a few manufacturers to choke out unfinished flooring. If the proponents of this tax would instead of treating their products like commodities and sell them based on value received to customer - then they wouldn't be advocating such a regressive tax to propagate what is essentially the problem of a few who have done little but denigrate the market place- all the while beating themselves on the chest about what "leaders" they are. What is most insidious is that the champions of this tax have little to lose- the rest of the industry, by contrast, much.
You might say "WD you produce unfinished enginnered, prefinished engineered and prefinished solid so why do you care?" Well we also produce unfinished solid. Unlike the self serving proponents of this new tax we work with architects and designers across the country and internationally and we know that there are times when solid unfinished is simply going to be the product. We will not abandon this product nor the distributors of our product and the contractors whose livelihood it is to install sand and finish our unfinished solid flooring product. This tax will not further the message of hardwood but will, instead, force more decision makers (consumers - foreigners to the lumber jockeys proposing this nonsense) against solid hardwood. Perhaps this is indeed the grater effort of the self professed "industry leaders" behind this legislation.
We need to arrest this process NOW!
We cannot believe this has gotten this far without a full understanding of the membership of the NWFA. This is a classic example of top down leadership the NWFA has fought against under great leadership lets not lose that mantra by supporting this legislation (tax) now.
WD Flooring
From our handheld to please ignore typos.
http://www.nwfa.org/CHECKOFF%20NWFA%201112.pdf
Leave a public comment against this legislation here: http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketBrowser;rpp=25;po=0;dct=PS;D=AMS-FV-11-0074
edited by wdflooring on 12/29/2013
edited by wdflooring on 12/29/2013
edited by wdflooring on 12/29/2013