Proposal could add to sales tax
Feb. 27—MOULTRIE — Throughout most of Georgia, counties can benefit from three local option sales taxes and school boards from one more. Colquitt County is one of eight outliers — counties whose school systems benefit from two of the taxes while the county government gets the other two.
A proposal making its way through the General Assembly wants to change that by adding a fifth possible tax available only in those eight counties.
The State of Georgia charges 4 cents on every dollar of a sales transaction. Local voters can agree to impose up to four more taxes, at 1 cent per dollar each: a Local Option Sales Tax, or LOST, to reduce property taxes, a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for capital projects for counties and cities, an Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for capital projects for school systems, and a Transportation Local Option Sales Tax to fund transportation projects.
Currently, Colquitt County has all four, giving a total of 8% sales tax on each purchase.
House Bill 1000 would allow the eight counties where the school board receives LOST money to also impose — with voters' approval — an additional 1 cent per dollar LOST to benefit the county and city governments. It would bring the total sales tax to 9% with the promise of reducing property tax rates.
Rep. Chas Cannon, R-Moultrie, whose main job is Colquitt County administrator, is one of six co-sponsors of HB 1000.
Cannon told Colquitt County commissioners last week that the LOST is the most flexible of all sales tax pennies because it can be spent on both capital and operations.
"So, in other words, your health insurance, your salaries, liability premiums and that kind of thing," he said.
The eight counties with school systems that collect a LOST are Towns, Rabun, Mitchell, Colquitt, Houston, Habersham, Chattooga, and Bulloch.
"It would take the sales tax to 9% but I think that might be okay to the voters because you'd have a larger amount of people, including guests from out of town and visitors passing through. They're going to be paying that tax for us. For operations of the county and the cities," Cannon said.
Some of the commissioners voiced concerns that if the sales tax went to 9%, residents would go out of town to buy items like vehicles to get a lower tax rate on them.
"I think it would be a lot easier to sell if other counties could do the same," said Commission Chairman Denver Braswell.
Cannon encouraged the commissioners to email him with any more questions on the bill.
He closed with the caveat that it was only going through committees at this point and that there was another larger "tax packet" being put together that might "swallow up" the bill.
A poll that was run on The Observer's website last week asked the question: "If your property tax could be lowered by adding a 1% sales tax to the existing sales tax, would you vote for it?"
Over the course of a week, only 30 people responded, but of those, 18 wanted to know how much the property tax would decrease before lending their support. Seven opposed the new tax outright, while five were in favor.
