“The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances and demonstrations for impressions.” These words of wisdom come to us from John Ruskin, an obscure British philosopher who died one hundred years ago. His words inspired me to check out the claims of SPLOST shills that out-of-county people pay as much as 30 percent of our local sales tax. If you can't wait to the end of this letter to find out how wrong they are, the up-front answer is “very.”

The closest any SPLOST supporter has come to disclosing her sources came during a recess at a Sept. 2 Tyrone Town Council meeting where the cochair of the pro-SPLOST committee told me surveys by cashiers at Wal-Mart and Home Depot (who asked customers their ZIP code) showed that 20 percent to 30 percent of purchases were from out-of-county buyers. During her presentation to the town council, the cochair declared that, as an optimist, she preferred the 30 percent figure, and SPLOST proponents have been using that 30 percent figure widely. Since they might use it again, it may be worth discussing.

The obvious appeal of this figure is that it suggests that our tax is paid by other people, who will continue to shop in Fayette County to help us no matter the level of our sales tax. Our charging them more tax is unkind, but the argument is that these other people are unkind to us when we visit them too. Moreover, the more they pay, the less we pay.

Here's the proof of how wrong the SPLOST supporters are with their 30 percent figure.

When computing the percentage of sales tax paid by out-of-county buyers, we must have a numerator (the sales tax amount paid by out-of-county buyers) and a denominator (the total sales tax paid). The total sales tax comes not from one but three sources: (1) in-store sales in Fayette County, (2) motor vehicle sales to Fayette County residents (no matter where), and (3) sales of items subject to Georgia sales tax shipped to Fayette County residents from out-of-county vendors. That amount is easy to find. Honoring a request I submitted under the Georgia Open Records Act, the Georgia Department of Revenue reported Fayette local option sales tax collections that averaged $1.17 million a month over the last eight months. Since the current tax rate is 1 percent, that tells us that total sales averaged $117 million a month.

Now, let's look at Wal-Mart and Home Depot sales to out-of-county people. The 1999 annual report of each company gives us average sales figures per store from which we can conclude that Home Depot takes in roughly $3.6 million a month, and Wal-Mart $3.4 million. That's a total of $7 million a month. If we are to believe that 30 percent of their sales are to out-of-county buyers, then $2.1 million, or 1.8 percent of our sales, is to outsiders. No claim has been heard that other stores attract a lot of outsiders. Grocery stores, especially, have a large volume of sales, and their customer base is concededly strictly local.

There's another place where one can look for outsider money, and that's the motels. I count seven main motels in Fayette County, namely the Wyndham Peachtree Conference Center (256 rooms), two Holiday Inns (88 and 60), Days Inn (60), Hampton Inn (61), Sleep Inn (61), and Best Western (47). The Peachtree Conference Center has a daily rate of $139 and the others range from $60 to $89. Under any reasonable assumptions on occupancy, these lodging establishments have monthly sales of about $1.5 million. That's 1.3 percent of all sales. Since the guests must eat somewhere, we'll raise this by about a third, to 1.7 percent.

So now we're at 3.5 percent. We can show that as much as 3.5 percent of our sales tax may come from outsiders. It'll be a cold day in hell when the SPLOST advocates can come up with honest figures that can raise this to 30 percent. They'll have trouble even proving that 5 percent of our local sales tax would come from outsiders.

Students of the social sciences know that fraudulent schemes target the weak. Those who are mathematically weak may buy into the 30 percent figure. Those who are morally weak may buy into the idea of soaking visitors. Those who are naive may relish the idea of getting something for nothing. And greed may inspire others to concentrate on all the benefits they might themselves derive from the extra tax. Everybody loves a bargain, and that's why clever marketers try to present their wares as a bargain.

For now it suffices to say that the 30 percent figure is a lie, and that a lie is a lie, even when it's disguised as a statistic. I personally challenge anyone, including government officials, to prove (in a way that is documented and can be verified) that outsiders pay 30 percent of our current Fayette County local option sales tax. This 30 percent figure is a lie that has lived long enough. It's time to snuff it out.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayette County

cypaquin@msn.com

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