Beyond Hot Dogs: The Price of Art Carts

In August, the Tacoma City Council changed the rules on mobile food carts: now they can be feast-for-the-eye carts. At last, Tacomans can buy more than fast food on the sidewalk, and artists can eliminate the gallery middleman. Artists now have the right to hawk their works at places like Tollefson Plaza. As long as their umbrella is under nine-and-a-half feet tall and the next food (or art) cart is at least five feet away, they’re in business.

Local artist Lynn Di Nino was excited, until she called the Tax and License folks. “If you’ve got an art studio in Tacoma, your yearly license fee is $80,” grouses Di Nino. “If you want a sidewalk vendor’s license it’s a $100 nonrefundable application fee. Then it’s $50 a year plus what they’re calling an additional $25 ‘branch fee.’ If I were to sell the postcards from the Tacoma postcarders’ group, and they sold for $1 apiece, and I set our booth up in Tollefson Plaza (which everyone knows has zero traffic), it might take years to recoup that $255 investment. Your typical artist setting up on the street will be very discouraged to hear this.”

Cart artists also get themselves on the city’s tax radar forever. You owe a B&O tax if you earn over $72,500 in total and over $20,000 within city limits. “There is no annual fee if you make under $10,000,” a spokesperson in the Tax and License department assured me.

Di Nino thinks these fees may fall. Tollefson Plaza used to charge a $600 minimum for arts groups to rent half of it for half the day, she says, plus additional fees for SaniCan rental, garbage pickup and security. When there were few takers, the fee was cut to about $100. “I predict the licensing fees for arts street vendors will take a similar path,” says Di Nino. •