SAYING YES TO ONE MORE CENT OF SALES TAX

I am struggling with the lack of press and "community stir" over the additional one cent sales tax that will be on the ballet in November. Based on the uproar of a year ago over property tax, I thought this would be the talk of the town. Maybe it is because very few understand it, or maybe it is because the county government is indifferent to it. This additional one cent sales tax is to be used to offset property taxes across all property classes - homes, rentals, business, and auto. In past elections to raise sales tax I have always voted NO. I was always concerned that there were no teeth in the proposals that forced the county to truly offset the sales tax increase in the form of reduced property tax.

Now thanks to the state of South Carolina's recently passed wave of property tax legislation, a cap has been placed on future property tax increases. The one cent sales tax is included in the cap on future property taxes, forcing the county to truly reduce our property tax by the amount that is collected through the additional sales tax. Sales tax has always been seen as the fairest of taxes, as it is a flat tax. Moving in this direction reduces the third level of and never ending tax - PROPERTY TAX. (Level 1 - tax on earnings, level 2 - tax on spending, level 3 - tax on ownership.) Even though many districts have no one running in November, I urge everyone to get out and vote for this proposal. This will raise our sales tax in the county to 8 percent-excluding food which is not impacted by this tax. However, sales tax will be reduced back to 7 percent in about a year after our special project sales tax lapses.

I would suggest that we don't vote for any additional special project sales taxes as they are truly a tax increase. Let's force our county representatives to manage their spending in a manner that leaves dollars on the table to build the kind of things that the last special tax funded.

I also encourage each one of us to push our state representatives to allow us to put more than just one cent of sales tax to offset our property tax, which is all that is allowed under the current law.

Please vote yes to truly reduce our Newberry County property tax in November.

Thank you,

Joe Goeckner

Newberry