So you buy a shiny new car for $30,000, and of course expect to pay an extra $1,500 for the sales tax, which includes $300 for the Fayette local option sales tax (LOST, big brother to SPLOST), also known as “the penny tax.” (This must be where the expression “paying a pretty penny” comes from.)

But your friendly county tax commissioner, George Wingo (who doesn't want you to ever forget his name), reminds you on your property tax bill that your county property tax reflects a sales tax reduction of so many dollars. So you figure your $300 didn't get thrown into a bottomless pit but is coming back to you, right?

Wrong! If you live in the unincorporated part of the county, you get back less than half the local option sales tax you pay.

How could that be? you ask. Well, it's not simple, and that's the way politicians want it to be.

First of all, the car dealer keeps $1.50 of your $300 and sends the $298.50 balance to the Georgia Department of Revenue. The revenooers keep $2.99 for themselves, and have $295.51 to return to the people of Fayette County. This is where things get interesting, so pay attention.

The state now sends a check for $140.37 to the county, or 47.5 percent, because that's the share the county commissioners agreed to receive, back in 1992. If you live in the unincorporated part of the county, that's all you get back out of the $300 “penny tax” you paid on that car. In fact, you get a bit less, because you have to share it with all the Fayette business property owners who pay property taxes but don't buy cars, food or clothes and thus don't pay much sales tax. (But that's another story.)

Where, you ask, does the rest of the money go? The state sends a check for 35.64 percent of the local sales tax to Peachtree City, 11.36 percent to Fayetteville, 4.91 percent to Tyrone, and .59 percent to Brooks. Then these cities or towns use the money to reduce the property tax of their businesses and citizens.

Do you get the impression that the people of Peachtree City double-dip and get back more than 100 percent of the local sales tax they pay, all at the expense of the people who live in the county? If you do, count yourself among the smart ones.

For each $100 of local sales tax a county resident pays, he gets back 47.5 percent and gives the rest to the folks who live in one of the cities or towns of Fayette County. There's no two ways about it.

Let's look at this another way. The local sales tax produces about $14 million a year right now. With 91,000 county residents, that's an average $154 per resident. Since the county gets 47.5 percent, the county's property tax bill returns about $73 per person, on average. Since Peachtree City gets 35.64 percent of the $14 million, about $5 million, the city's property tax bill returns about $161, on average, to each of its 31,000 residents.

In summary, everybody pays $154 in sales tax, but some people receive back $73 and some people receive back $234 (adding $73 plus $161). (The figures for Fayetteville, Tyrone and Brooks would have to be worked out, but you get the idea.)

How, you ask, could such a stupid, unfair system, have come about? Well, you can't argue that the Peachtree City politicians haven't been smart. You can reach your own conclusion about the others, and about the system.

There is a lesson for the future in there, though. If the politicians of our county cannot come to an agreement on how they split the LOST pie after the 2000 census, the LOST tax can be discontinued. That explains why they are currently struggling to come to an agreement.

The best and fairest deal for the Fayette County taxpayers might come from the politicians' inability to agree, rather than the county commissioners' caving in to the cravings of municipal officials for more than their fair share (which is zero, since all the sales tax should be shared equally by all the county's citizens).

With a 4 percent total sales tax, Fayette County can be the envy of the whole state, and think how mad that would make the Atlanta papers!

Claude Y. Paquin
Fayette County (unincorporated)
cypaquin@msn.com

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