The Peachtree City mayor is

entitled to his opinion about the practice of showing the county and cities'

income from the local option sales tax as a deduction on property tax

bills. But it remains a fact, undisputable, that the county and cities

can (and do) charge less property tax because they receive some local

sales tax.

The problem, Mr. Mayor, is

that the cities receive about 50 percent more sales tax than their citizens

contribute, and the 45,250 residents of the unincorporated part of the

county receive only 47.5 percent of what they contribute. Talk about tax

inequity!

I will let you in on a dirty

little secret because there is, in fact, more to it than that. A lot of

businesses, in this county, including large land-owning developers, pay

virtually no sales tax. The main reason they don't pay sales tax is that

they don't buy anything, or hardly anything, unlike people who have to

buy cars for transportation, as well as clothing and food for daily survival.

One large land developer, so

I have been told (without personally verifying it yet), gets the benefit

of a $318,000 property tax reduction from the local option sales tax.

Just think of all the retail stores, grocery stores, convenience stores,

drug stores, banks, offices, industrial plants and other businesses that

get so-called property tax relief out of our sales tax, eating up a good

25 percent of it, while managing to pay very little of it.

The people, even the poorest

among us, do, in fact, end up subsidizing businesses. That's the Robin

Hood principle in reverse: take from the poor, give to the rich!

It's time the people opened

their eyes, not just their wallets. If the county commission ever screws

up enough courage to call a referendum to repeal our local option sales

tax, as was suggested in last week's Citizen, we should welcome that opportunity

warmly. That's an idea worth cultivating, and fertilizing.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayette County

[email protected]