Just wondering who else pays crazy high sales tax. We pay 10 percent on literally everything including foods and meds. I was just thinking today how much more money we would have in the food budget if we didn't have to pay this!
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Heather , mama to Liam, born 12-19-01, and Simon, born 04-17-05 wife to Mark, married 09-23-97
Location: firmly planted in the postmodern pastoral economy
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That's crazy that you pay it on food and meds!
However, you don't pay as much in property tax so it would even out *somewhat* if you lived somewhere else. E.g., I pay $2500 in taxes every year on a house valued at $145k. But sales tax is much more regressive than property tax. I mean, you can have a modestly valued house and pay less, whereas sales tax hits those who make less money, much harder.
Ours is 6%. Exemptions are food, medication, clothing and shoes (used to be under $110, now is ANY price). Beer and wine ARE taxed. Hard liquor is not because all liquor stores are state-run.
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Wow, 10% is crazy! Ours was 5% but as of Jan 1 it just went up to 6%. We pay tax on clothing and any kind of convenience food/beverage, but not food like milk, produce, etc. I don't know about meds...
Yes our property tax is low, but imo paying tax on meds and food is just a poor tax. Property tax is low because we have to vote in a property tax hike, and every time it comes up for a vote, timber companies do massive lobbying to convince the little man that it will hurt him, when in reality it mostly would hurt the timber companies and people who own large amts of land. You also get much more in the way of services-- our poor government is stretched sooooo thin. Oh also a balanced budget is part of our state constitution, so if they don't pull in what they think that they should in sales tax, then we go into a state called proration, where the budget is prorated by the amt of money actually in it. Schools are what suffer the most when this happens-- it gets pretty dang bad honestly.
Alabama is such a poor state-- I honestly don't know what the answers are here. People won't vote for a property tax hike because they are afraid of getting stuck w 10 percent sales tax and high property taxes. In reality, the last property tax hike would have only changed our property tax by a couple hundred a year, but they had just pushed a sales tax hike immediately before. State sales tax is only oh 7ish percent I believe? The rest is a local tax that is primarily to fund schools (unfortunately it doesnt really do its job)
ETA we also do have state income tax, and it is pretty high. We end up paying pretty much every year, even though we get back a decent amt in federal taxes
Location: firmly planted in the postmodern pastoral economy
Posts: 12,991
The answer is lots of government reform to make the timber companies and big biz in AL pay their share. But it's a lot easier said than done, of course.
I agree w/10% sales tax on everything being a poor tax...that's why I said what I did, about it being regressive. And it sucks that you pay that and still get crappy education and govt services. Just trying to point out that the silver lining is that although your monthly budget for food etc is higher, lower property taxes somewhat evens it out...
5% here in Virginia. 2.5% for food (we were surprised, since it was 7% and 3% in Georgia). There's an income tax, too, but it's the property taxes, oh the property taxes that really get a person here. If we want to buy a house near DH's aunt and uncle (and we're pretty sure we do), we'll be looking at over $4k a year, and that's for the cheapest foreclosure of a house we can find.
Wikipedia says Alabama is responsible for 4% of it, and the other 6% is your local sales tax. That's a huge local sales tax. It's capped here at 1%. Since it's local, I'm surprised that they don't put it on property.
Here is the property tax bill for our house (searchable on the database if you know anything....our name or our address )
The first number is the appraisal value last year. The number after the location name is our appraisal value this year.
The red is the amount of tax we pay to that entity.
214,257 MCKINNEY CITY 221,459 0 221,459 0.588000 1,302.18 214,257 COLLIN COUNTY 221,459 0 221,459 0.245000 542.58 214,257 COLLIN C C COLLEGE 221,459 0 221,459 0.087683 194.18 199,257 FRISCO ISD 221,459 15,000 206,459 1.580000 3,262.05
Just trying to point out that the silver lining is that although your monthly budget for food etc is higher, lower property taxes somewhat evens it out...
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