I Owe You and Apology
It’s not very often that I get the opportunity to be wrong, but I was. I made a really bad mistake the other day and need to atone for it. I pride myself on giving you accurate information and offering my own perspective on local and state events and then allowing you to draw your own conclusion as we engage in debate, but Saturday, I let you down.
I wrote a post that essentially said Marion County residents were staring down the gun of an $85 million tax increase as a result of the new taxing authority given to the Mayor and Council by the State. That number is not totally accurate.
This summer, taxpayers are not facing an $85 million tax increase. That number is closer to $170 million. How did I get that figure? In addition to the 0.5 increases in public safety tax, which would yield an estimated $85 million, there is another scheduled increase (0.1) in the county option income tax slated to go into effect July 1, which is another $17 million. Also, local governments can raise income taxes to offset the freeze in property taxes and that amounts to about another 0.4 increase. Take all those tenths of a percent and add it up and you get an estimated $170 million tax increase this year for Marion County residents.
Although there is some property tax relief on the way, you wont see it for a while. These tax increases go into effect this summer and your “rebate” won’t show up until later this year if you see it at all. The money from the rebates would come from expanded gaming, but the State and casinos have their own issues to work out. And depending on your mortgage company, you may not see anything at all.
And please note in all this $170 million in new taxes, you really aren’t getting much in new services. This is all to maintain what you have. You get some more court space and infrastructure, but I’ll be writing in a few days how we played the ultimate shell game to deal with jail overcrowding.
But until then, please accept my apology.
