Home » Economy » Recent Articles:

Poll: Missouri Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday a Good Idea?

Missouri’s Back-t0-School Sales Tax Holiday is August 5-7:

During this time, Missourians won’t have to pay the state’s 4.225 percent sales tax on certain purchases made in the state. Alana Barragán-Scott, director of the Missouri Department of Revenue, said the tax break will help those making big purchases the most. (Source)

Our state government even produced a lame video to promote the event:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W8qA5DbRcA

From the Missouri Back-to-School Sales Tax Holiday page:

Certain back-to-school purchases, such as clothing, school supplies, computers, and other items as defined by the statute, are exempt from sales tax for this time period only.

The sales tax holiday applies to state and local sales taxes when a local jurisdiction chooses to participate in the holiday. However, local jurisdictions can choose to not participate in the holiday if they enact an ordinance to not participate and notify the department 45 days prior to the sales tax holiday. If the jurisdiction had previously enacted an ordinance to not participate in the holiday and later decided to participate, it must enact a new ordinance to participate and notify the department 45 days prior to the sales tax holiday.

If one or all of your local taxing jurisdictions are not participating in the sales tax holiday, the state’s portion of the tax rate (4.225%) will remain exempt for the sale of qualifying sales tax holiday items.

The sales tax exemption is limited to:

  • Clothing – any article having a taxable value of $100 or less
  • School supplies – not to exceed $50 per purchase
  • Computer software – taxable value of $350 or less
  • Personal computers – not to exceed $3,500
  • Computer peripheral devices – not to exceed $3,500

Thankfully the site details how these items are defined:

Section 144.049, RSMo, defines items exempt during the sales tax holiday as:

“Clothing” – any article of wearing apparel, including footwear, intended to be worn on or about the human body. The term shall include but not be limited to cloth and other material used to make school uniforms or other school clothing. Items normally sold in pairs shall not be separated to qualify for the exemption. The term shall not include watches, watchbands, jewelry, handbags, handkerchiefs, umbrellas, scarves, ties, headbands, or belt buckles.

“School supplies” – any item normally used by students in a standard classroom for educational purposes, including but not limited to, textbooks, notebooks, paper, writing instruments, crayons, art supplies, rulers, book bags, backpacks, handheld calculators, chalk, maps, and globes. The term shall not include watches, radios, CD players, headphones, sporting equipment, portable or desktop telephones, copiers or other office equipment, furniture, or fixtures. School supplies shall also include computer software having a taxable value of three hundred fifty dollars or less.

“Personal computers” – a laptop, desktop, or tower computer system which consists of a central processing unit, random access memory, a storage drive, a display monitor, and a keyboard and devices designed for use in conjunction with a personal computer, such as a disk drive, memory module, compact disk drive, daughterboard, digitalizer, microphone, modem, motherboard, mouse, multimedia speaker, printer, scanner, single-user hardware, single-user operating system, soundcard, or video card.

The poll question this week seeks to find out what readers think of this annual event. The poll is located in the upper right corner of the blog.

– Steve Patterson

 

 

Can St. Louis Learn From Newark NJ & Cory Booker?

I’ve seen Cory Booker  on TV and in the news. Booker is the young mayor of Newark NJ. To some of you, 42 may not be young, but anything younger than me (44) is young in my book.

ABOVE: The Manhattan skyline as seen from the NJ Turnpike on January 15, 2008

I’ve been to Newark once.  More accurately, I saw the highway exit as I was driving to Rhode Island in January 2008. I wanted to stop and visit, but my schedule didn’t permit.

Troubled cities are attractive to me for some reason, perhaps the challenge of reversing negative trends? Newark, like Detroit and St. Louis, has serious issues.  I knew in 2008 that Newark had this new mayor, 37 when he was elected mayor. Booker’s lost to 4-term incumbent Sharpe James in 2002 but when James didn’t seek a 6th term in 2006 Booker won the non-partisan election.

As I watched Street Fight, the documentary of the 2002 race, I couldn’t help think of parallels to St. Louis:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8jtAASYdLw

Old urban city with a large African-American population, poor performing public schools, poverty & high crime, entrenched machine politics and the dirty tricks that go along with that to discourage challengers.

Famed urban engineer Harland Bartholomew worked for Newark before coming to St. Louis.  We’d have been better off had he stayed there.

Newark does have some differences from St. Louis. Their elections are non-partisan, their municipal council has only 9 members – five from wards and four at-large. Corruption in Newark is so bad “where every mayor since 1962 (except the current one, Cory Booker) has been indicted for crimes committed while in office.” (Newsweek)

I plan to learn more about Newark’s efforts to reduce violent crime, improve schools and attract jobs. I’ve started watching episodes of Sundance Channel’s Brick City series.

– Steve Patterson

 

 

Poll: Should Scrap Metal Dealers Be Required To Mail Checks Rather Than Pay Cash?

ABOVE: Cash's Scrap Metal on N. Broadway couldn't pay customers in cash is a new bill becomes law

The poll this week relates to a bill at the Board of Aldermen:

The ordinance would force scrap yards to stop dealing in cash and to computerize records of what they buy and from whom. They could only accept air-conditioner coils from certified technicians and could lose their business license if they violate the ordinance.

It is the first item — requiring scrap dealers to pay their customers by a mailed check — that is causing the most consternation. But that’s the one element police say is a must if the city wants to curb scrap metal thefts that are costing property owners thousands in repairs and driving rehabbers out of St. Louis.

Since 2010, the city has seen more than $6 million in scrap metal thefts, $1.5 million of that since March. Police say drug addicts who steal scrap and sell it to support their daily habits would lose interest without the immediate payout of cash. (STLtoday.com)

Board Bill #86 sponsored by  16th ward Ald Donna Baringer on June 3, 2011. Co-sponsors listed are Troupe, Arnowitz, Wessels, Boyd, and Cohn:

An ordinance pertaining to the purchase or resale of scrap metal; repealing Ordinance 67424, presently codified as Section 15.159 of the Revised Code of the City of St. Louis, pertaining to electronic database requirements, purchasing HVAC scrap metal, establishing licensing requirements and rules and regulations for persons doing business in the City of St. Louis as scrap metal merchants; containing definitions; a penalty clause, a severability clause and an emergency clause.

I’ve read opposition on Facebook, saying this bill, if passed, will hurt legit guys who collect metal for a living. The argument is they depend on cash to buy food and pay rent.

I don’t have a strong opinion, but I’d like to see how readers feel about this issue so this is the poll topic this week. As always, the poll is in the upper right corner of the blog.

– Steve Patterson

 

 

Weekly Poll: What Do You Think Of When You Hear The Term “Affordable Housing”?

ABOVE: Public housing project before major renovations

Earlier this month I participated in a two-day conference on affordable housing sponsored by FOCUS-St. Louis (agenda- PDF):

FOCUS St. Louis, in partnership with the Des Lee Collaborative Vision, presents Housing: Building a New Foundation for Economic Prosperity. This symposium explores affordable housing in Missouri and Southwest Illinois, taking a close look at the disparity between the location of many jobs and the location of housing that is affordable for workers who fill those positions, and ways to resolve these issues to help build sustainable, prosperous communities.

You are thinking, “Why bother in St. Louis?”  Our housing is cheap, right?  I was on a panel discussing land use policy as it relates to affordable housing.

Affordable Housing is the subject of the poll this week (upper right of site). Results and commentary on Wednesday April 6, 2011.

– Steve Patterson

 

Gas Is Too Cheap

March 10, 2011 Economy, Environment 8 Comments

I’m tired of the news stories about the recent spike in gas prices, as a nation we’ve enjoyed cheap fuel for decades.  Long enough to build ourselves into a corner where if we don’t continue to have cheap gas our society crumbles. Well folks, the party is coming to a close. Now the Obama administration is considering stepping in and selling some reserves:

“The U.S.-held emergency oil supply – called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve – contains 727,000,000 barrels of oil … enough to supply the nation for several months.

Proponents say releasing oil from the reserves would calm spiking gas prices and limit the threat to the U.S. economic recovery. Critics say the oil reserves should be saved for a true emergency.” (CBS News: Would tapping oil reserve help in wake of Libya?)

An increase in price isn’t an emergency — yet.  We need to figure out how to transition from our cheap gas culture (sprawl, limited transit, etc) to the reality the rest of the world has known for years, oil supply is limited.  Officials worry about the economic recovery, but they want to get back to the old economy that requires cheap gas.

In other parts of the world gas can cost the equivalent of $6-$8/gallon! We must work on a plan to get us to this point with as little pain as possible.  We will get there at some point anyway, I’d just rather we planned for it than having it creep up on us.  The pain (war) it will take to keep our cheap gas society over the next 20 years will be far worse than planning for change now.

From April 2010:

“Responding to one of the first major directives of the Obama Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today jointly established historic new federal rules that set the first-ever national greenhouse gas emissions standards and will significantly increase the fuel economy of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States. The rules could potentially save the average buyer of a 2016 model year car $3,000 over the life of the vehicle and, nationally, will conserve about 1.8 billion barrels of oil and reduce nearly a billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the lives of the vehicles covered.” (Source: EPA)

Raising the CAFE standards was a good start, we’ve got to let gas prices go up so that buys demand the more fuel efficient vehicles the automakers must begin selling in volume.  The longer we wait the harder it is going to be when the time comes.

ABOVE: Modern streetcar in Portland OR
ABOVE: Modern streetcar in Portland OR

The following steps need to be taken:

  • Raise fuel taxes to fund modern urban transit systems (modern streetcars) and discourage auto use.
  • Change zoning & building codes to require compact/walkable development.

We don’t need to ban cars, we just need to tilt the playing field so people have legitimate options to get from A to B.

– Steve Patterson

 

Advertisement



[custom-facebook-feed]

Archives

Categories

Advertisement


Subscribe