Step aside Pennington, there's a new liquor tax advocate in town
After a successful attempt at keeping the cell phone tax this election, they're going to bring it to the legislature in the hopes of getting even more revenue for County Government:
It is past time, some Minnehaha County commissioners think, for county government to benefit from a liquor tax.Read it all here as you guard your pocketbooks. The counties want revenue. And guess where it's coming from...That might be something the county board asks lawmakers from Minnehaha County to bring before the state Legislature when it goes into session next year.
The county board is considering several priorities for the 2007 Legislative Session, but they all focus on one concept: money. Besides the liquor tax, their concerns include:Changing the statutes that govern sheriff's fees, which administrative assistant Ken McFarland says "are no longer remotely reflective of what it costs to provide those particular services."
Setting up a separate distinct levy for ambulance districts, such as the library levy, rather than using general funds.Counties, which rely on property taxes for their funding, would benefit if all fee schedules for sheriff's services came from local sales tax options, not state statute, McFarland said.
and...Commissioner John Pekas recently had lunch with a group of lawyers, and the smokers in the group gave a blunt directive.
"They said now it's time to raise taxes on alcohol, because if you're taxing me for my sin, you should tax all the drinkers for their sin," Pekas said."The failure to take action speaks volume just as much as doing something in the legislature. ... If we're taxing tobacco, there quite simply is no reason to not tax alcohol."
Comments
If more money is needed, let's slap a tax surcharge on new vehicles over $40,000. South Dakota never wants to tax people who can most afford to pay.
In other words "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need"?
Just think for a moment why the booze tax fails in the legislature.
Most taxpayers consume alcohol including legislators. The legislators and the general populace don't want to increase their own taxes. Apparently voters wanted to disprortionately tax tobacco users, but this booze tax proposal won't fly.
I don't care who the tax increase would target, governement would just continue to grow if the booze tax increase goes ahead.
How would we know that all the money raised by the booze tax would be going to law enforcement. Any new taxes would simply subsidize any other spending the commission wanted to engage in.
If you remember Minnehaha county just opted out for law enforcement or to "jail the drunks"
County commissioners need to grow some balls and if they want taxes raised they should either do it theirselves, put it to a ballot option, or not do it. Instead they want to pass the political football to the legisalture in order to distribute the political fallout over the entire states.
This smacks of political cowardice. Put it up to the people or do it yourself and take the heat. I mean if we need it so bad and if us lowly citizens are too unenlightened to undertand the issue, vote to do it and face the music.
I'm not sure that is going to pan out, alot more people drink than smoke.
Taxes should be assessed only as necessary - not because something else is taxed (John Pekas's plan). By Pekas's theory, we taxed cigarettes, so there really is no reason not to tax inheritances since people die from smoking.
Government needs to control its growth before raising any more taxes.
yet the new tax on tabacco is not sending anywhere near 58 million to medicaid reimbursement.
The first 30 million goes into the general fund under the theory that it's replacing the money that otherwise would have been spent but for the 58 million in medicaid expenses.
If that's the case why not outlaw tobacc? Probably because then there would be nothing to tax.
Why does SD keep trying to get more out of middle/lower income people? Could it be that they don't have lobbyists in Pierre?
I say SF and Penn along with the other larger cities in SD need to learn to live within some budgets.
What in the world happened to the 5-10- and 15 year plans.
Not everything is suppose to be instant gratification.
All it does is create a bigger government and bigger tax burden and then people get upset with the government because they had to have another program.