It’s worse than I imagined. Remember that I asked how much money the City of Thayer brought in last year from property taxes? I wanted this information so I could figure out whether or not the TCBA’s latest sales tax proposal was indeed a tax hike in sheep’s clothing, or a simple redistribution of the tax burden.
The South Missourian News is reporting that city hall estimates this year collections for real estate taxes will be approximately $54,883.23 and personal property taxes will be approximately $16,800.35.
That totals $71,683.58.
The TCBA says replacing property taxes with a one-cent city sales tax will bring in $340,000 a year. Even that number is suspect, because they said the HALF-cent sales tax we rejected would have generated $175,000.
Now, I’m no math whiz, but doesn’t two times $175,000 equal $350,000, not $340,000? But for the sake of argument, for now I’ll take their word for it and use the lower number.
So, what they have proposed amounts to a citywide $268,316.42 tax hike without designating what that extra money is to be used for. Funny how they didn’t mention that part when they addressed the city council.
I have a sneaking suspicion what they plan to do with a large chunk of that money – hire an economic developer, which the voters rejected last November.
As I noted previously, on an individual basis, this plan would raise my taxes almost tenfold.
So let’s take a look at who it would benefit.
Basically, it boils down to this – the more expensive your house or business, and the less money you spend in the Thayer economy, the better off you would be under this plan. A person who owns a million dollar house and spends very little money in Thayer would make out like a bandit.
On the other hand, someone with a $20,000 house, who can’t afford to do their shopping in Springfield, or even West Plains, would be SOL. They’d find themselves in the same boat I’m in – a drastically increased tax burden.
TCBA stands for “Thayer Community Betterment Association.” I have to ask myself, whose betterment are they talking about?
Figuring out how much more money you’d have to pay takes a little effort. Get out your checkbooks from last year, and write down the amount of every check you wrote in Thayer. Add them up. This won’t count all the money you spent in cash, but it will give you a ballpark figure, although it will be somewhat lower than the amount you actually spent.
Now take the total you came up with and multiply it by .01. If you spent $20,000 in Thayer last year, your increase will be $200. If you spent $10,000, your tax increase will be $100.
Now, dig out your city property tax records for last year, for both real estate and personal property. Compare this amount with what you figured up under the TCBA’s new proposal.
I’m willing to bet that for the vast majority of Thayer citizens, the TCBA’s plan will cost them at least five times as much as what they’re paying now. If not more.
If this plan was truly simply about making the tax system “fairer”, and not a tax hike in sheep’s clothing, wouldn’t the TCBA have proposed a smaller sales tax increase? To generate the same amount of money as the city’s getting now, the sales tax increase would have been between one-eighth and one-quarter of a percent.
But instead they came up with one cent. I have to wonder again, where does that extra quarter of a million-plus dollars go? And why won’t they tell us?
I guess being in sheep’s clothing makes it that much easier for the wolf to try to pull the wool over our eyes.
# posted by The Last American @ 8:57 AM
