It is with amusement that I read the City and Borough of Juneau Voter Information pamphlet on propositions 1, 2 and 3. These are all related to sales taxes.<\/p>\n
As a senior citizen, I recently experienced the CBJ Assembly placing a 5 percent sales tax on seniors. When this happened, we were told that the CBJ would receive a million dollars in additional sales tax revenue.<\/p>\n
At a recent meeting with CBJ Assembly candidates, someone stated that seniors make up 20 percent of the Juneau population. So imagine my amazement when I read that passing Proposition 2 would result in $25.5 million to the CBJ coffers. Can this be correct? I think that there is some creative thinking. Here is the math. If 20 percent of the population pays 5 percent and that results in $1,000,000, then the other 80 percent of Juneau residents at 5 percent would result in an additional $4,000,000. That is a total of $5,000,000. But wait the proposition is for a 3 percent sales tax. So if 5 percent tax equal $5 million, then 3 percent tax equals $3 million. Did you follow that? Did I make a mistake? I\u2019m in the phone book, call me and I will walk you through this math problem.<\/p>\n
So who is paying the other $22.5 million?<\/p>\n
My guess is tourists and visitors. So why do we not pass a specific tourism tax and give the residents a break? It can be done, but only if the CBJ is forced to do so by the voters.<\/p>\n
I realize that my numbers and calculations make some assumptions, but you get the idea that a lot of people are paying a lot of sales tax. Or perhaps there is a flaw in the CBJ\u2019s assumptions.<\/p>\n
So remember that slogan from the 1980s about the war on drugs? It can also apply to taxes. That slogan is \u201cJust Say No.\u201d That is what I am going to do. I encourage you to vote and follow my lead. It is time for the CBJ to make some internal cost saving changes.<\/p>\n
I am a senior, and I do vote!<\/p>\n
Rosemary Matt,<\/p>\n
Juneau<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is with amusement that I read the City and Borough of Juneau Voter Information pamphlet on propositions 1, 2 and 3. These are all related to sales taxes. As a senior citizen, I recently experienced the CBJ Assembly placing a 5 percent sales tax on seniors. When this happened, we were told that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":14,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-26646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26646"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}