When I first moved to Pennsylvania from North Carolina, I thought I had hit the lottery. I distinctly remember standing in Express buying some clothes on sale and waiting for the total. When the sales girl finished ringing me up, the total showed. It was the same as the subtotal. I stood there for a moment, waiting for her to add in sales tax. She stared at me. I stared back at her. “There’s no tax?” I asked her, incredulously. “Not on clothes,” she said. I turned to my friend, Bren (yes, Kelly and Brenda, just like on 90210 – we thought we were very cool at the time) and remarked, “It’s like another sale!”
North Carolina slaps a sales tax on nearly everything. Prescription meds excepted, of course. But nearly everything else.
It was no surprise to hear, then, that taxpayers in the Tarheel State have finally had enough. After raising the tax rates to 8% in Alexander, Catawba, Cumberland, Haywood, Hertford, Lee, Martin, New Hanover, Onslow, Pitt, Randolph, Rowan, Sampson, Surry and Wilkes Counties (that’s an additional 2.25% over the state rate of 5.75%) in the past year or so, fourteen counties said no to an increase this year. The vote wasn’t even close in most of those counties with more than 70% of voters in half of the counties opposing the measure.
Of course, a “no” vote won’t necessarily keep the question off of the ballot time. By state law, counties can raise individual sales tax rates with voter approval which means that, in many counties, the question pops up on the ballot every year. The resounding “no” however might make county officials rethink their election strategies. Might. We’ll see.
Tax on food has long been a issue among the folks in NC since Gov. Terry Sanford (1961-165) convinced the NC General Assembly to create “Terry’s tax” on food as a progressive move at the time. The tax was 3%. It was promoted as a “temporary tax”, which still exists to this day. Define ‘temporary’.
Efforts have been made ever since trying to repeal this repressive tax on a commodity that is essential, especially to those trying to live and feed a family on low wages as was the case in the ’60’s and ’70’s.
Finally in mid-1990’s, the NC legislature had heard this issue from the public long enough. Efforts were made to repeal, but a compromise was made to reduce to 2%. Again a repressive tax for the state’s poor and middle class.
This “temporary tax” made permanent, still has not kept NC sales tax on most daily items, from causing NC to have hugh deficits in the state budget.
The 2009 North Carolina General Assembly enacted legislation that provided for a temporary additional 1% State sales and use tax effective September 1, 2009 and will expire on July 1, 2011, making sales tax on many purchases as much as 8 to 8.25%. Note this is set to expire July 1. 2011. With the state and county budgets all hurting with deficits and restricted
services (library closings and reduced hrs was the first to go), I doubt this tax will vanish with the sunset July 1. 2011.
NC leaders, lead by the past and present governors, have duped the NC legislatures and public into approving programs specifically for a designated purpose, then robbing the accounts to balance the state budget (a NC Constitution requirement). Two of the most abused are the state tax on gasoline (Good Roads tax) and the recent NC Educational Lottery. Both were “robbed” by Democratic Gov. Easley and Gov. Bev Perdue. Lawsuits have been filed in NC Supreme Court challenging their actions, but little has been done to reverse those executive branch decisions.
One final note, NC Counties have the ‘priviledge’ to raise taxes on sales and property taxes, to meet the needs of their specific domains. But many such as New Hanover, Mecklenburg, Forsyth, Cumberland and a few others take these collected taxes from their citizens and give them to large companies to entice them to either remain in their counties, or move to their counties. Mecklenburg, Gaston and Cabarrus counties were actually bidding against each other for a high tech firm. AND NC sweetens the deal with a state grant, from, you guessed it, state taxes collected from the natives.
NC is a premier state. Giving tax monies to corporations that would have moved here anyway for a number of reasons (non-union labor, moderate wage base, skilled and educated work force, great landscape and great folks) is wrong. In New Hanover County, Titan Cement wanted to locate on a site that was formerly Dixie Cement, and they bought the land and facilities, bought adjacent lands, then announced they wanted to move here and create 150 new jobs. They had made the decision to locate here already. But the county leaders decided that Titan Cement needed to know how much we appreciated their consideration of putting their plant here (they had already made the decision) and gave them $400,000 in county monies. This from a county that is cutting services at every point.
All this is to point out, NC has regressive taxes, and poor leadership at county and state levels to use the monies collected for their stated purposes.
So, as in Kelly’s article, NC folks are tired of tax and switch. More county commissioners will lose their jobs with folks who are opposed to more taxes, in whatever shape they are packaged. Except the folks in Mecklenburg County. They seem to like their taxes. Have at it Mecklenburg!