Is Your City, County or Special Tax District Raising Your Taxes This Weekend?

You may not know it but this coming weekend is a holiday! No – not the kind you get to take off from work. But it is the kind you get to take sales taxes off your bill – if you live or shop in the right locations! Years ago, the legislature passed a “Back to School Sales Tax Holiday” to help lighten the load for consumers. Unfortunately, many political subdivisions don’t allow you to celebrate this holiday.

When this measure was first passed, every political subdivision wanted to have the ability to automatically “opt out” or in other words NOT participate in reducing taxes for the weekend. They certainly didn’t want to be put on the spot to have to actually vote to increase taxes during the holiday weekend.  They preferred to just let it happen and not go on record supporting the tax increase.

As a legislator at the time, I didn’t believe that was right and made sure that any political subdivision that DID NOT participate had to actually take a vote to “opt out” and RAISE their taxes for that weekend. If you are gonna increase taxes on people even – temporarily – you should be willing to publicly say so. There have been other sales tax holidays created since this one and unfortunately, government won out over the taxpayer as they all are “opt in” rather than “opt out”.

Taxpayers should be aware of those who choose to discourage business for the weekend rather than encourage it. These entities are counting on people either not noticing or not voting with their dollars and shopping elsewhere. The following is the list of cities, counties and special taxing districts who have chosen to raise taxes for the weekend. You can download the list here.

Hopefully you can review the list and choose to shop in locales that give the taxpayers a break!

Hopefully you will review the list and contact your local elected officials and ask them what they were thinking when they voted to increase YOUR taxes for the weekend!

Below is the list of cities that will not participate in the 2012 sales tax holiday. City, County and District sales tax in these locations will still be collected on the sale of qualifying holiday items.

Cities Increasing Taxes for Weekend Shoppers

Counties Increasing Taxes for Weekend Shoppers

Districts Increasing Taxes for Weekend Shoppers