The state of Georgia through our General Assembly and governor is asking the voters of all Georgia counties to vote on a transportation 1 percent sales tax in July 2012.
This 1 percent sales tax is in addition to other 1 percent sales taxes counties already have in place. This would be called the TSPLOST TAX (Transportation Special Projects Local Option Sales Tax).
Most counties have a 1 percent ELOST TAX, a 1 percent SPLOST TAX, and a 1 percent LOST TAX.
The ELOST TAX (Education Local Option Sales Tax) is a special tax for local school systems to improve infrastructure within their county.
The SPLOST tax (Special Projects Local Option Sales Tax) is a special tax for local county government to improve infrastructure within their county.
The LOST tax (Local Option Sales Tax) is a special tax to alleviate property taxes within the county, i.e., allows a reduction in the millage rate.
Now the state of Georgia wants voters to approve a 1 percent sales tax for roads and bridges and other infrastructure that falls under GDOT’s (Georgia Department of Transformation) purview.
This would bring the number of 1 percent optional sales taxes placed upon all citizens of Georgia to four.
Counties using the SPLOST TAX get to keep all the monies collected (100 percent) from this tax to benefit the needs of their county. This tax can be, and most often is, used to improve roads and bridges and other needs of the county.
Under the TSPLOST TAX rules, counties are only allowed to share 25 percent of the tax collected within their region of counties to be used within their respective counties.
The other 75 percent goes to the regions where there is a need for improvement bound by the constrained lists.
This constrained list has a lot of input from GDOT as there are state roads involved and one region’s plan may need to match up with another region’s plan to avoid confusion. The funds will be used primarily in heavily populated areas where there are heavy traffic patterns.
This is a discriminatory tax pitting larger counties against smaller counties within their region.
Larger counties get a bigger piece of the 75 percent that the state collects from the tax.
Our counties have a SPLOST we can use for improvement, and we keep 100 percent of it. We don’t need a TSPLOST tax where counties only get back a portion of the tax.
This TSPLOST is being put to the voters because our elected officials have failed in their duties to provide a budget and make a decision on how best to spend our tax dollars.
And now they are asking the voters to make a choice about a 1 percent sales tax to increase the revenue needed for road and bridge improvements.
We elected them to make these decisions on tax increases and budget decisions and now they are spending untold tens of thousands in efforts to get this tax passed by the voters in july 2012 because they have failed to make decisions and now are attempting to shift the decision to the voters, and let the property owners guarantee the debt.
This is a bad tax for the citizens of Georgia. I ask you to send our legislators back to Atlanta to make a right decision and do what we pay them for, and that is to make hard decisions based on equality of taxation.
The ones that do the most damage to our transportation infrastructure are the trucking industry. Let them man up and bear a bigger share of the burden.
This tax hurts the poor the worst and there is no food exemption for this tax.
Vote NO July 2012 for TSPLOST.
Mike Sims
Blairsville, Ga.
