Letter to the Editor: This Deserves serious Reflection and Consideration for the Future of Our School Systems

I’ve seen this statement a lot lately and it is not accurate.

The tax does not apply to all goods that a person would purchase so just dividing 1 (sales tax raise) into 8 (current base sales tax in Quincy) is not accurate math.

While it is accurate to say that one particular item might have a sales tax increase of 12.5% that item would have to be a qualifying item and the real $$$ increase of the cost item would depend on its sale cost.

For a $10 item with an 8% sales tax the item costs $10.80

For a $10 item with a 9% sales tax the item costs $10.90

That is a 1% increase in the cost of that item which is a total of 10 cents.

In addition all unprepared food, prescription drugs, cars, trucks, farm equipment and most professional services are exempt from this sales tax.

So let’s take an example of someone going about a normal Saturday of shopping and say they spend $300 on a lunch, groceries and maybe get a haircut.

$40 lunch

$230 groceries

$30 haircut

Of that $300 only $40 applies to this tax (the lunch) so that lunch is $43.60 instead of $43.20.

So on $300 spent by that person in their afternoon they have realized a $0.40 raise in the cost of their purchases.

$0.40 / $300 =0.00133 or a 0.133% raise.

Let’s not play silly games with math simplifications and let’s concentrate on what the intended purpose of this action is. This is a revenue diversification program. It spreads that tax collection over a larger pool of payers than just property owners and it is not tied to a person’s geographic location meaning the payers of this tax will also come from outside our community.

In addition, this also allows all of our county school districts to have a dedicated source of revenue that is not tied to state budgeting and the political ebbs and flows of that situation.

Did you know that 59 counties in Illinois already have some form of education fund dedicated sales tax?

Or that Adams County is in the lowest tier of tax rate for school funding in the state and is only currently solvent because of high property assessed value appreciation?

Adams County currently ranks 85th out of 102 counties in aggregate property tax rate going towards our school system. While I don’t want our county to be #1 on that list, I do believe it illustrates that our school system has been on the way low end of property tax burden historically especially when compared to other school districts our size.

If I had a vote for this as an Adams County Board member (which I don’t this is a ballot vote among the people of this county as it should be), I would vote for it and as a citizen I am going to vote for it.

I think this deserves serious reflection and consideration for the future of our school systems in this County. Please support this initiative.