These are the cookies Steere delivered. Photo (and caption) via Golden Age Bakery’s Facebook page.

CHAPEL HILL – The NAACP’s “Moral Monday” demonstration drew hundreds to Raleigh again this week to speak out against the bills being passed by the state’s General Assembly–but many other North Carolinians are getting active in other ways, including one small business owner in Chapel Hill who chose a unique way to get her message across.

Sylvia Steere (a friend of the author) is the owner of Golden Age Bakery, a gluten-free bakery she operates out of her Chapel Hill home. Ordinarily she’s trying to sell her cookies, but on Monday she gave them away — 170 of them, in fact — hand-delivering one each to every single legislative office in the State House and Senate.

Her mission? To urge the General Assembly not to pass House Bill 998, the House’s tax-reform plan that will expand the scope of sales taxes while cutting the tax rate on large corporations.

“It will reduce corporate taxes, over the next few years, to completely eliminate them by 2017 — and that’s going to put a lot of the burden on the people that actually consume,” Steere says. “That would be approximately 95 percent of North Carolin(ians) spending more in sales taxes.

“It’s a tax cut for the rich and a tax increase for the poor, and ultimately I don’t consider that good for business, from a small-business standpoint.”

Supporters of the bill say it’s designed to ease the tax burden on businesses — including small businesses — by basing taxes more on consumption. But Steere says a consumption-based tax system wouldn’t be good for her business either.

“If I were a large corporation, I might consider it beneficial,” she says, “but I’m a consumer, and my customers are consumers. And I’d like to not raise prices on ourselves to lower corporate taxes. I feel like it’s the large corporations that could probably afford to spend a little bit more.”

House Bill 998 is not the only tax plan out there: the State Senate is debating several different tax reform proposals, and Governor Pat McCrory has offered his own as well. Each of those plans also include reductions in the corporate tax, though not all of them expand the sales tax as the House bill does.

The General Assembly and Governor McCrory’s office are expected to reach agreement on a final tax plan by the end of the month. While the final plan may not please Steere, she says she’s glad to have spoken out — and she’s hopeful her novel approach might have gotten legislators’ attention.

“It felt very good, actually — just to get out there, see some faces, smile, (and) hand them off,” she says. “They were — in my opinion — very beautifully packaged little thank-you cards, with my note saying why I don’t think they should pass this bill, and a little cookie showing who I am and what my business is doing.”

Steere sells her products online and in local stores, including Southern Season and Foster’s Market.