Everyone Complains About Taxes...

More Local Voter Insanity


I voted yesterday, did you?

I must be a really good citizen because the only thing I could vote for or against was one item--the new Special Local Option Sales Tax, or SPLOST V for short.

SPLOST V is a 1% sales tax, added on top of the 6% state sales tax and the "regular" 1% local option sales tax we pay here in Glynn County Georgia.

Are you confused yet?

Well, I'll keep my point simple.

I voted against the SPLOST V because I thought that it was too early to be voting on a tax that wouldn't begin being collected until 2007. In my opinion, a good deal can change in 14 months, and the list of projects that the county commissioners was proposing to spend the expected $120 million on was too vague and needed to be further qualified and explained.

I thought that SPLOST V should have been voted on next November after the commission and the voters had the opportunity to discuss things further.

The government sells these sales taxes using the idea that a sales tax in a resort area like St. Simons makes our tourists share in the cost of providing and maintaining our infarstructure--things like water and sewer pipes.

The only problem with this premis is that a tourist stays here and pays the tax for a week or two, I live here 50 weeks a year. It seems to me that I end up paying more of the tax than Joe Tourist when it is all said and done.

Anyway, as it turns out, my negative vote didn't matter because the new tax was approved by a 60% margin and beginning in 2007 it will guarantee that our residents and tourists continue to pay 8% tax on their purchases until the year 2012.

The sad thing is that only 13% of the eligable voters turned out to vote on this issue. This means that this sales tax INCREASE was approved by only 7.8% of the voters.

Less than 8% of the voters determined what 100% of the residents will pay.

A perfect illustration of Democracy in action...

No one needs to be coming to me complaining about high taxes in the future.