Stan Geiger

Sales Taxes in Mayberry

Yesterday, as I bounced around the TV, I ran across an old episode of ‘The Andy Griffith Show.’ The show has been around for over 40 years, yet it can still provide the most entertaining option for viewing at times. I find that amazing on the one hand, but somewhat pathetic on the other.

Anyway, the episode was in color so I would date it sometime in the mid ‘60s. Goober had lost his job at the filling station and taken a job as a cashier in a Main Street store. A customer made a purchase which the Goob rang up. Back then there were no bar codes or fancy scanners; a cashier looked at a price tag and pushed buttons. The purchase rang up at $8.98. Then the Goob added the tax. The tax came to 13 cents.

Using the above information, I calculate the Mayberry sales tax rate in the day was 1.5 percent. Tulsa’s sales tax rate, at that time, was 2 percent. That was all state; neither the city nor the county had a sales tax.

A purchase made in Tulsa today is hit with a sales tax of 8.517 percent. The state rate is up to 4.5 percent, the city charges 3 percent and the county gets the rest.

It could be worse. My sister lives in Chicago these days. A purchase made in that city is taxed at a rate of 10.25 percent. Around these parts, voters at least have the opportunity to turn down a proposed sales tax hike. Not even the state government can raise the tax without a super-majority yes vote of both houses or a public yes vote. In Chicago, politicians can raise the sales tax at will. And they have apparently done so a number of times.

In the Mayberry of the past, the tax on an $8.98 purchase was 13 cents. In the Tulsa of today, the tax on an $8.98 purchase is 76 cents---nearly 6 times higher. That’s bad enough, but one can’t stop there in the analysis. One has to consider the impact of inflation as well. I mean, hell, a guy can spend $8.98 buying lunch at a fast-food joint these days. The sales tax is a percentage-of-purchase-price tax. So when prices go up your tax liability goes up with them.

I’ll be generous. Let’s say the purchase price of an item from the mid 1960s can be multiplied by 5 to find the modern-day price. That puts the price of the item in the Goober example at $44.90. The tax on the same item purchased in Tulsa today would come to $3.82---a whopping 29 times higher.

Are we done? Well, not quite. Banksters factor into the equation as well.

While the tax burden on working-class people has dramatically increased, real wages for the millions in that class have declined. That circumstance, extended over the years, created an environment that forced more and more people to turn to plastic. I think the current average credit card debt per household in this country is in the neighborhood of 10 grand.

When you swipe a card, it doesn’t just read the purchase price; sales taxes are included. Interest---exorbitant interest---is charged. So people---for many years---have, in effect, been paying “interest taxes” on their sales taxes.

And then we look up one day and wonder why we have an economy that stinks on ice.

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