One penny

[sgrizzle]

With Tulsa's 3rd penny going mainly to fix roads, and increasing need for operating costs, and no money for transit and other capital improvements.

We are currently looking at:
4.5 cents for state
2 cents for operations
1.1 cent for (primarily) roads
.6 cents for Vision2025
.25 for county  misc?
.067 for the county jail

Total of 8.517

Here is a proposal:
4.5 cents for state
3 cents for operations, with the additional cent being divided .25 going to public safety, .25 going to unfilled city positions and .5 going to transit operations
1 cent to city capital. (by vote, every 10 years, contingent that no more than 60% go to asphalt)
1 cent to county capital. (by vote, every 10 years, contingent that no more than 20% go to asphalt. larger river projects would go here)

Total of 9.0


Just throwing numbers out there for discussion, but I think this could bring stability to city government, fund what needs funded, and take a lot of the complication out of the city votes. When people are voting on .067c they don't understand it.

[Townsend]

When people are voting on .067c they don't understand it.

It seems, with voter turn out, when people are told there's an election they don't understand it.

[Conan71]

Why not get the state to cede 1 penny of it's 4.5 to the municipalities and replace that funding via income tax?  Aside from being regressive, high sales tax makes Tulsa less attractive for tourism and convention business. 

Oh wait, that's because every Rethug in the legislature and exec branch has higher aspirations and they want to brag about cutting taxes so we can't possibly raise income tax.

[swake]

The most simple solution is to enforce sales tax on internet purchases. The main erosion into city funding is the internet.

That said, I would like to end all sales taxes and make it up with a combination of income taxes and property taxes.

[Conan71]

The most simple solution is to enforce sales tax on internet purchases. The main erosion into city funding is the internet.

That said, I would like to end all sales taxes and make it up with a combination of income taxes and property taxes.

It's not a simple solution as it's impossible to enforce.  That requires out-of-state vendors to keep tax records specifically for Oklahoma residents.  Making all small sellers keep those records won't happen.  There's also no possible way the state could collect all records of purchases made from the internet.  That's why the use tax is an honor system which is predictably failing.

[sgrizzle]

It's not a simple solution as it's impossible to enforce.  That requires out-of-state vendors to keep tax records specifically for Oklahoma residents.  Making all small sellers keep those records won't happen.  There's also no possible way the state could collect all records of purchases made from the internet.  That's why the use tax is an honor system which is predictably failing.

There could be a requirement that any vendor with greater than $100,000 of sales in a particular state to collect sales tax, so it only gets the amazons.

It's not that hard for the big sites (amazon, ebay, etc) to compute local sales tax. When I order a pizza from dominos that site can figure my sales tax. While not every state is like oklahoma, all amazon would have to do is remit tax payments to one office even though they shipped to dozens of cities.

[swake]

It's not a simple solution as it's impossible to enforce.  That requires out-of-state vendors to keep tax records specifically for Oklahoma residents.  Making all small sellers keep those records won't happen.  There's also no possible way the state could collect all records of purchases made from the internet.  That's why the use tax is an honor system which is predictably failing.

You can easily calculate taxes by address/zip in a not all complicated database.

[Hoss]

You can easily calculate taxes by address/zip in a not all complicated database.

Have you tried it?  My former company did.  It was a nightmare to rollout and maintain.  Remember, municipalities and counties change rates often.

[Conan71]

You can easily calculate taxes by address/zip in a not all complicated database.

That's not the point.

Try making thousands and thousands of vendors comply with the collecting, reporting, and remitting.

As far as Grizzle's comment on eBay, they have a function to automatically add in sales tax where required.  It's still optional for vendors to set that up and doesn't even ensure they remit it.

[Red Arrow]

The most simple solution is to enforce sales tax on internet purchases. The main erosion into city funding is the internet.

That said, I would like to end all sales taxes and make it up with a combination of income taxes and property taxes.

We could get rid of much of the "regressive" nature of sales tax by not charging sales tax on food, clothes, and prescription drugs. Many other states do it that way.  It should be easy with all the computer point of sale registers.  Pennsylvania did not charge sales tax on those items way back when.  I remember putting all the sales taxable items on the checkout first so the subtotal would be easier for the cashier.

[Hoss]

We could get rid of much of the "regressive" nature of sales tax by not charging sales tax on food, clothes, and prescription drugs. Many other states do it that way.  It should be easy with all the computer point of sale registers.  Pennsylvania did not charge sales tax on those items way back when.  I remember putting all the sales taxable items on the checkout first so the subtotal would be easier for the cashier.

Texas did the same thing.  However, the difference will have to be made up somewhere, and that somewhere will likely be on property taxes, just like it was scaled in Texas.

Not saying I'm not for it, I'm just being realistic.  Doing that with the revenue issue that Oklahoma seems to have at the moment would go over like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl.

[Red Arrow]

Texas did the same thing.  However, the difference will have to be made up somewhere, and that somewhere will likely be on property taxes, just like it was scaled in Texas.

Not saying I'm not for it, I'm just being realistic.  Doing that with the revenue issue that Oklahoma seems to have at the moment would go over like the proverbial turd in the punch bowl.

I would have to agree the difference would need to be made up somewhere, none of which would be popular with some group or another. It would help squelch the "regressive" lobby some.

[TeeDub]

I like the simplicity, but it would only be a matter of time until the budgets needed to be expanded and the rate raised to 9.017 in order to maintain curbside flower gardens and upgrade roadway paint to glow in the dark.

[davideinstein]

9% is way too high. Only 12 cities in the entire country would have a higher sales tax.

[Red Arrow]

9% is way too high. Only 12 cities in the entire country would have a higher sales tax.

Darn!  We can't be #1 at anything.  In this case we wouldn't even make the top 10.