Read the column here.
The foregoing is intended as a brief outline only. Even though the various sales taxes mentioned
above are all variations of the same general concept, the legal structures and
technicalities governing each vary considerably insofar as duration of the tax,
on what the revenue may be spent, and how the sales revenue is to be
distributed, etc. In fact, this is
another of those instances when I could have penned a good comparison and
contrast of the various local option sales taxes, but such a thing would have
come in several times longer than my target of 750 words. Be that as it may, those who so desire can
employ the links below to learn all that they may desire about the subject (and
then some).
In addition to the 4% sales tax collected by the State of
Georgia, four other 1% optional sales taxes may be collected at the county
level (excepting the MARTA levy unique to the Atlanta area) and a fifth may be
collected at the special transportation district level, though not all can
operate simultaneously.
A county may levy "up to two" local option sales
taxes, but this limit only applies to 1) LOST, 2) HOST (a county cannot have
LOST and HOST both, and 3) SPLOST. ELOST, levied for the benefit of a school
district, does not county against this limit, thereby making the limit three in
a practical sense. Even what some of these taxes cover can vary by county
depending on when they were enacted by the county in question. And, of course, TSPLOST is on top of all of
these and is unaffected by any limit on county-level optional sales taxes.
According to the Georgia Department of Revenue, Sales and
Use Tax is defined as “a tax upon the consumption of tangible personal property
and certain services. It is levied or
imposed upon retail sales, rentals, leases, uses, or consumption of tangible personal
property and certain services that are specifically taxed under the Georgia
Retailers and Consumers Sales and use Tax Act.”
The Georgia Supreme court invalidated 1975’s original LOST
statute in 1979, ruling that counties had no constitutional basis for sharing
revenue with municipalities. The General
Assembly rewrote the law in 1979, this time creating 159 “special districts”
through which the program could be administered. Not coincidentally, those special districts
correspond exactly to the boundaries of the state’s 159 counties.
The LOST statute continues to evolve. In 1994, a provision was added requiring
counties and qualified cities to renegotiate their respective revenue
distributions following every decennial census.
This was followed in 1997 by a provision that required county and
municipalities governments to adopt “service delivery strategies,” so as to
eliminate the duplication of services and bridge any gaps that may exist in the
provision of services. Finally, 2009 saw
the introduction of the so-called “baseball arbitration” provision that
enlisted the county’s superior court as a binding third-party arbitrator in
case the parties cannot agree on a revenue distribution scheme. None of these provisions are applicable to
the other local option sales taxes mentioned.
Clarke County’s original SPLOST levy ran for a single year,
from October 1985 through September 1986.
That was followed by a second levy running the four years from April
1988 through March 1992. Following a
three year hiatus, a pair of five-year levies ensued, spanning the periods from
April 1995 through March 2000 and April 2000 through March 2005. Next came a six-year affair, running from April
2005 through March 2011. We are up to at
least nine years with the current SPLOST 2011.
Notice how they keep getting longer and more expensive.
Ostensible control of ELOST levies resides with the county
government as, by state law, a board of education is a “requesting authority,”
as opposed to a county commission, which is a “levying authority; a school
board cannot impose taxes in and of itself; it must request its levy though the
county government.
Clarke County’s trio of completed ELOST levies ran from July
1997 through June 2002, from July 2002 through June 2007, from July 2007
through June 2012. The current levy
extends from July 2012 through June 2017.
The three optional sales tax implemented in Clarke County
have become, for all intents and purposes, permanent additions to the tax
landscape. Yes, I realize that these
levies are ostensibly “optional” (though to my mind the ballot resolution
process is consistently stacked in favor of “pro” votes) and that the voters
have approved them (but only with the consent of a plurality of the county’s
registered voters).
To the best of my knowledge, Clarke County voters have
denied but a single optional sales tax ballot resolution. That happened back in 1993, when a one-year
SPLOST referendum, slated to retire general obligation bond debt on the Clarke
County jail and general obligation intergovernmental debt on the Athens
Downtown Development Authority parking debt, was defeated by the margin of
about 3 to 2. Otherwise, the single
LOST, six of seven SPLOST, all four ELOST, and the recent T-SPLOST ballot
resolutions have all passed here, usually by considerable margins (the T-SPLOST
vote being a notable exception).
O.C.G.A. (See Title 48 – Revenue and Taxation, Chapter 8 –
Sales and Use Taxes):
Department of Revenue Sales and Use Tax Overview:
Department of Revenue Sales Tax Rate Chart (July 2012):
Department of Revenue Sales and Use Tax Historical Rate
Chart (July 2012):
Association County Commissioners of Georgia SPLOST Guide
(March 2011):
Association County Commissioners of Georgia LOST
Negotiations Guide (October 2011):
Georgia Municipal Association LOST Guide (January 2011):
Georgia Municipal Association SPLOST Guide (June 2004):
New Georgia Encyclopedia article on “Revenue Sources,
Local:”
Addendum - And just to gum up the works even more, a school district does not have the power to levy taxes. In legal parlance, it is a "requesting authority." It must go through the county government to levy its taxes for it. That is why the Athens-Clarke County Commission, as the county's "levying authority," must formally enact the Clarke County School District's property tax levies. Of course, according to case law the Commission has no legal authority to deny the CCSD's requests (assuming that they are made in a legal manner), but that is fodder for another day.
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