ADAMS COUNTY: THE ARGUMENT AGAINST SALES TAX FOR SCHOOL FUNDING
Realizing there are a great many steps left before School Sales Taxes would become a reality, it seems an apt time to look at the theory behind local government sales taxes and how it applies or doesn't apply to school funding.
Removing it from our area for a minute, when I go to Springfield on business and I stop and buy something, I use Springfield's streets. I know if I have an emergency their tax-funded police and firefighters are there for me. I'll probably use some of their city water directly or indirectly. We can quibble about the amount but it makes perfect sense for a small amount of my purchase tax to be to support the pavements that lets me drive smoothly within the city and the traffic lights that let me interchange safely. The key is USE or POTENTIAL USE.
When I go to Springfield, I don't use their school facilities. I don't depreciate their school infrastructure one bit. Most of the clerks or servers who help me didn't even go to the public schools there. The young ones are usually at UIS from somewhere else and the few who are in High School always seem to be from Chatham or Griffin. So I'm not even benefitting from their school system. If I'm not using it, not depreciating it and don't need it on stand-by for me, then the argument for me paying for it dissolves and blows away.
The new Illinois Law in this regard tries to deal with the usage issue by spreading the tax around within a given county. That would do a fat lot of good for somebody, for example, from Marion County shopping in Adams County. No matter how many times we split the money and no matter how accurate the formula, that guy's local school is getting none of his tax money and he's not using ours.
Please understand, I'm not saying we don't need to find new and equitable ways to fund education. The sales tax is just not rationally connected to education in any way that Sales or "Retail Occupation Tax" is a sensible response to the obvious need.
Of course, nobody wants to say "Income Tax" because they'll turn into a pumpkin.
Just in terms of the Theory of Governance, the Sales Tax Doggie will not hunt.
posted by UMRBlog @ 03:38
12 comments
12 Comments:
You make an interesting argument about the sales tax. However, I am wondering about your useage example.
Here's why. We are a region. And there are numerous examples of localized efforts to Market us that way.
That being said...how many of the citizens of Quincy work in Missouri?
How many of the citizens in Missouri work in Quincy? If they in fact hold jobs on either side of the river...who does that benefit? And where are they getting their education so that they might find and keep those jobs?
Given that we all benefit from education from both sides of the river and given that an educated individual is less likely to get arrested and go to jail in either State, does it not behoove us to explore the possibility of paying a tax which we have a better opportunity to control than one we cannot for Education?
I can decide to buy an item or two based on my disposable income. I cannot decide on my own what tax I pay on Property I own and may occupy.
Would it not be less expensive in the long run to pay for education through this tax rather than continue to allow the system to break down and therefore commit more and more people to the Dept. of Corrections?
$6,000.00...$7,000.00 or even $8,000.00 per student for education is a lot less expensive in the long run than $25,000.00 per person per year to lock them up.
And some relief from the Property Tax through a shared Tax that will allow consumers to decide when and where to spend it makes more sense to me.
Just some thoughts...What do you think UMR?
Thrilled to have a thoughtful reply.
I'm sure it will be a matter of minutes before someone jumps in and tells us both that the Koreans are educating nuclear scientists in one room schoolhouses for $14.27 a year, or some such and, therefore, we don't need any more money for education.
I think you will concede that the regional "usage" of K-12 education is more remote than the usage of visitors of municipal infrastructure. When I drive the streets in Hannibal, I wear down their pavement, potentially use their police and fire services and their 911 center. Maybe I benefit from someone educated there, maybe not.
Since Jefferson espoused the concept of universal public education, it has been a given that some of what has been learned by those who work with us or serve us has been learned in another context or area.
If you're from Brown County or Marion County and you need something (or your child does) from Old Navy, you don't have a lot of realistic spending choices.
I get that you can, to some extent control your consumption and that makes a sales tax more palatable. I also get that, for now, internet consumption defeats a lot of these tax questions. Fair points.
Still, the justification for a Point of Sale tax to support education is a lot more remote and attenuated than the justification for a Sales Tax to support the infrastructure the shopper actually uses or consumes.
Finally, on the Regional thing, the financial, medical, cultural and retail center of the region is Quincy. Somebody from LaGrange is probably coming to Quincy to get a prescription filled, or for imaging. Adams County will then extract a non-proportional share of the revenues based upon sales, utterly unrelated to the population to be educated. If everybody adopted the same sales tax scheme tomorrow, it seems to me the big losers would be Lewis and Clark Counties. Based upon sales, the flow would be to Adams and Marion with nothing to justify it, other than the existence of more retail portals in those two counties. Oh, yes, the money would be split up equitably among the public school districts WITHIN ADAMS COUNTY. That wouldn't do squat for the kids of Lewis and Clark Counties.
The Nexus between Sales and educating kids escapes me. The nexus between sales and handling visitors is easy to see.
Agreed we need to find money for true education but I don't think a method with no rationale is the right method.
Thanks for your thoughful comment.
TYFCB
umr
How would you rate the performance of public education over the last 40 years?
Soneone, actually public education has done pretty well, overall, over the last 40 years. It's done so despite the best efforts of religionists and right-wing fruitcakes to do it in. Yeah, the patronizing attitudes of the supposedly "liberal" educational establishment of the 1960s and 70s left the system so "dumbed down" that we ended up with the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the religious right because people were not longer bright enough to see through their lies. Yet, even this part of the world manages to educate kids to want to do more than fritter away their lives on Wal-mart wages.
When I go to St. Louis or Springfield, I go because I feel I need to go...to buy something or see something I can't see here. I really don't question or examine the sales tax rates on my purchase(s), I have to accept them as a given. I think the same can be said for someone 30 - 50 miles outside of Quincy that comes to Quincy to acquire whatever they can't get closer to home. Yes, they may grumble, and they have in the past, but one has to drive on.
I am assuming the customary exemptions would apply to groceries, prescriptions, cars and the like.
As an Adams County voter, I only wish the County Board would commit to a percentage rate prior to the election. No knowing how much the new tax will be will be a death blow to any chance it may have. Of course there will be those against it period. However, I find a quarter or half percent tolerable whereas one percent is too much, even if it can be justified by the school districts.
I also give a lot of credence to what board members Jeff Mays and Glen Bemis offer on this item.
Back to you, Tony.
10:55
I'd say you haven't been paying attention if you believe public schools have done pretty well. The question was for Umr. Umr?
I'm bettin Jefferson never envisioned a universal government monopoly on education. There's a difference between that and the government funding education.
The sales tax rate in Quincy is already to high without adding more for the schools on top of it.
I respect your opinion on that but it really doesn't have much to do with the basis for using Sales Taxes for Education Funding.
TYFCB
Regarding your 8:29 post, I understand your point regarding the apparent lack of a connection between a consumption (sales) tax and school funding. However, I seem to recall that either at the state or national level, there was once or stilll is a tax on software, which if it is being collected, is simply going into a general fund. No real reason, basis or need for a tax on software, I just believe it was eneacted because it was a new and in demand item. Do you happen to know if such a tax exists?
My point is, I believe there are a plethora of taxes out there, the revenue from which is distributed for purposes unrelated to the tax source.
1549,
I'm no expert but I would offer the following:
If you have a high end child, you want that child at most large district public systems. The many locations, facilities and program access will do more for the high achiever than a nurturing environment of a smaller, private school (General Rule, Folks: please save anecdotes.)
Likewise, if you have learning disabled child, you probably want him or her in the public system for many of the same reasons.
The rest of the bell shaped curve, it seems to me, is losing ground in the USA. They can't make change, they don't know Denver is not a state. Although we have good books and apparently good teachers, we lose ground to more and more countries each time measurements are taken from standardized tests. This is particularly true of math and science.
Maybe our schools are as good as they always were and the rest of the world has just improved. Maybe they just "want it" more acutely. I really don't know. I know Mom and Dad, as a general rule, don't take as much interest in the kids educations as they once did. Is this because americans are more stupid, the two paycheck family, flouride, flu vaccine, global dorking? I don't know.
I do suspect it has more to do with the construct of the american family than it does with the knowledge delivery system in the schools but that conclusion is totally intuitive on my part. I can't come near proving it.
Community Colleges are frequently asked to clean up the mess. Folks show up for "college" and the school has to give them a 0xx math and English course to get them up to sub-basic in these areas. The good news is that at least those folks are there because they want to be. That's encouraging.
Without doubt, our public schools are losing ground viz the rest of the world. Whether that's a school problem or a kind of a NASCAR/WalMart America problem, I jut don't pretend to know.
Sorry I'm not more knowledable about the cause of all this fun. Thanks for the question.
UMR ... while you make some very valid points, I wonder: If a similar tax has passed in all 99 counties in Iowa, why wouldn't a sales tax for schools pass in Illinois counties? Is this is a situation where if you don't pass the tax, you'll be wishing you did when everyone else passed it? In Iowa, they're even considering passing a statewide tax instead of leaving it up to every county.
http://www.siouxcityjournal.com/articles/2008/04/10/news/iowa/c2cf43737404d7b686257427000cdb59.txt
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