A food industry group is urging Pennsylvania lawmakers to stop credit card companies from charging swipe fees on the state sales tax.

“For food retailers operating on razor-thin margins, being charged swipe fees on sales tax is fundamentally unfair,” said Alex Baloga, President and CEO of the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association.

The association is supporting state House Bill 2090, which Baloga called “a narrowly tailored, common-sense fix that protects Main Street businesses, helps keep prices down for consumers, and restores basic fairness to the payment system.”

The bill, currently in the Pennsylvania House Finance Committee, addresses what the association says is a longstanding imbalance in the credit card marketplace, “where two dominant payment networks control more than 80% of the market and impose excessive, anticompetitive fees on merchants. Under the current system, retailers are charged interchange fees on the full transaction amount, including sales tax, money collected on behalf of the commonwealth that merchants never retain,” the organization said in a news release.

In addition to ending swipe fees on the sales tax portion of transactions, HB 2090 would prevent penalty fees in disputed transactions from being imposed until liability is formally determined. The enforcement authority under the bill is limited to payment card networks. Banks and credit unions won’t be subject to enforcement actions under the legislation.

The Pennsylvania Food Merchants Association represents nearly 500 member companies from around the world that operate thousands of retail food stores, production facilities and distribution centers.