Hey everyone, guess what. Well, I meant hey everyone in Los Angeles. Our sales tax just went up to 9.25%…
April Fool’s!
Uh, wait. No - it’s actually real. What a day for them to pick for the rate to go up. Most cities that were sitting at 8.25% before today will see a 1% increase. Others will get more than a 2% bump - like Pico Rivera which is going to 10.75%. Jeebus.
I’m a little bummed out, if only that it’s going to cause me to re-calculate the restaurant tips. Californians have known that you just double the sales tax to get the approximate tip. Well, maybe the waiters deserve more in these bad times.
Long ago, when I visited Oregon as a kid, I just couldn’t believe there wasn’t ANY sales tax for the state. It was like being in a foreign country. I know that you pretty much won’t notice a 1% increase for most everyday things you buy. But if you were seriously looking for a car or other high price item, I hope you got it before today…
[Edit: I just read in a few places that for LA County, there is ANOTHER sales tax increase of 0.5% coming up in July 2009. This will kick it up another notch to 9.75%. (Sorry, Emeril)]
Source: LA Times
Add to del.icio.us
Digg
Stumble Upon
April 1st, 2009 at 7:40 am
DAMN that stinks. And at more than 10% I probably would seriously consider moving. Goodness.
April 1st, 2009 at 7:48 am
You can see why I’m dreading the impending bills that California has introduced to try and wrangle more taxes out of e-commerce (like Amazon orders, etc.) That would kinda suck too. What is the sales tax like in Ohio? I don’t really know anything about other states, other than Oregon there is none.
April 1st, 2009 at 9:16 am
Ohio’s is 5.5% by cursory google search. I live there and thought it was 5 or 6 but had to look it up since, you know, I don’t buy much. I don’t know much about sales tax/cost of living in other states either and I just read in a book called Predictably Irrational that it’s very difficult for person to change their frame of reference on such things. So moving somewhere else doesn’t help for a while because people tend to insist on paying whatever they were paying before.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:47 am
Chicago’s (but not all of Cook County) tax rate is 10.25% as of last summer. That’s for everything except food or medicine, I believe. I had some friends visiting me from Oregon last week, and they were all, “what is this extra money we’re paying for stuff?” Midstate here in IL it’s about 6.25%, and 1% for food.
April 1st, 2009 at 10:50 am
@kirk - I think you’re right about the frame of reference. We went to Canada back when the exchange rate was very favorable to the U.S. - it was so difficult to convert between currencies in my head, I found I was willing to pay so much more for everything and when I found out the actual price I couldn’t believe how low it was.
@pj - I did hear about Chicago area being high, that was one of the other cities they were comparing to when they were talking about L.A.’s increases.
April 1st, 2009 at 11:09 am
So is that the 1% sales tax raise for the whole state that they’ve been talking about, or is that just for the LA area?
Sales tax varies wildly in the Chicago area. In the city, it’s over 10%, where I work in Oakbrook it’s 7.75%, but across the street in Oakbrook Terrace it’s 9.25%. They do tax food out here, but it’s at 2.5%. I’m not even sure exactly what it is in my area, maybe 8%?
April 1st, 2009 at 12:51 pm
@holly - I believe it’s the same one as the state, I knew about it for awhile. The rate varies a bit, but i believe the baseline in most southern california areas is 9.25% now, whereas before it was 8.25%.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:37 am
I read that this tax increase is supposed to be temporary. I don’t believe that though, I’m sure it will be “for the duration of the emergency.”
April 7th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Ohio isn’t too bad. What I don’t like though are all the extra taxes for hotels and stuff. There’s regular tax and then like service tax, and hospitality tax and so on. It’s crazy and makes for much higher amount of money spent when you’re looking to take a vacation in state.
October 5th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Hey, we all have a great weapon that we can use in response to sales and property tax increases: MOVE OUT! If everyone moves out, it will send a message to the asses that increase the taxes. If there’s no one around to pay this exorbitant tax, then maybe they’ll think twice about doing it somewhere else.