Taxes and Other Revenues.

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Does the Local-Option Sales Tax Provide Property Tax Relief? The Georgia Case

Jung, Changhoon

Public Budgeting and Finance, Spring 2001, pp. 73-86

Since the 1960s, two-thirds of the states have liberalized their laws to allow local governments to impose sales taxes. The number of localities implementing the sales tax increased dramatically during the anti-property tax revolts of the late 1970s and early 1980s, making the sales tax the second most important source of local government revenue. Although one of the primary policy goals of state legislation authorizing local option sales taxes was to reduce property tax burdens, few studies have been conducted to demonstrate whether or not this effect has been realized. The author attempts to fill this gap by analyzing Georgia's Local Option Sales Tax Act of 1975, which permitted counties to impose a 1 percent sales tax, with all revenue collected in the second year of the tax and beyond going toward dollar-for-dollar property tax reduction. Using regression analysis, the author tested three separate hypotheses about the relationship of the sales tax to property tax burden and government spending. Although...