Yes, it is true, Alabama's overall sales tax is among highest in the U.S.
Yet if every American was given $100, it would go further in Alabama than any state except in Mississippi:
While Alabama's sales tax is high, our other taxes are low, especially the property tax. That's nice for homeowners, but especially nice for the large landowners, the companies that own hundreds of thousands of acres.
And the sales taxes are regressive. Poorer folks spend a larger per cent of their income on food and other essentials, and those are taxes at the higher rate...10% in Montgomery.
[NOTE: A good read, and related to this post, in a way, The Washington Post Saturday story of Tunica Mississippi which welcomed casinos as a way of escaping poverty.
[Sunday Focus is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com]
Yet if every American was given $100, it would go further in Alabama than any state except in Mississippi:
While Alabama's sales tax is high, our other taxes are low, especially the property tax. That's nice for homeowners, but especially nice for the large landowners, the companies that own hundreds of thousands of acres.
And the sales taxes are regressive. Poorer folks spend a larger per cent of their income on food and other essentials, and those are taxes at the higher rate...10% in Montgomery.
[NOTE: A good read, and related to this post, in a way, The Washington Post Saturday story of Tunica Mississippi which welcomed casinos as a way of escaping poverty.
"Perhaps no place in America’s Deep South had ever received a better chance to create new economic opportunities for its people. Starting in the early 1990s, Tunica had become a neon-lit casino destination. The county had since raked in $759 million, a fortune for a county with 10,000 people."But the Post reports it didn't work out.]
[Sunday Focus is a regular feature of www.timlennox.com]
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