Saxby Chambliss accuses Jim Martin of what?

We can’t watch television these days without being bombarded with political ads in the U.S. Senate run-off race between Saxby Chambliss, the incumbent Republican, and Democrat Jim Martin.

In these commercials, Saxby Chambliss accuses Jim Martin of having voted for the greatest tax increase in Georgia history. Some commercials even say Jim Martin increased taxes 32 percent. Wow!

So what did Jim Martin do?

He did the same thing that the Fayette voters did in November 2004, and again in November 2008. He raised the sales tax by one percentage point.

In my recent series of educational articles about taxes and SPLOST, I presented a history of the sales tax in Fayette County. My Aug. 13 article explained that the Georgia legislature had increased the statewide sales tax in 1989 from 3 percent to 4 percent.

Jim Martin was serving as a representative in the Georgia General Assembly at the time, and he voted for that 1 percent increase, as obviously did the majority of the legislature. That’s why he stands accused in the Chambliss commercials of having voted for the greatest tax increase in Georgia history.

How about that 32 percent increase? An increase in tax rate from 3 percent to 4 percent is a 33 percent increase, isn’t it? I cannot explain why Chambliss is accusing Martin of increasing taxes 32 percent instead of 33 percent. Chambliss might not be really good at math.

Within the space of four years, Fayette County voters have increased their own sales tax from 5 percent to 7 percent. That’s a 40 percent increase. Unlike Jim Martin who raised the tax only once, they did it twice.

I don’t know what Saxby Chambliss is prepared to say about Fayette County voters, whose votes I thought he was courting. Each time he criticizes Jim Martin, he is criticizing us. It’s a weird world out there.

Claude Y. Paquin, a Fayette County resident, is a retired lawyer and actuary.]