Let’s do some elementary high school math. The tax RATE just went from 5% to 6.25%. So the RATE increased by 25%. But the tax increase is 1%.
For example, if you spend:
$1, you used to pay $1.05, now you pay $1.06, difference of $0.01, percent difference: 1%
$10, you used to pay $10.50, now you pay $10.63, difference of $0.13, percent difference: 1%
$100, you used to pay $105, now you pay $106.25, difference of $1.25, percent difference: 1%
$1000, you used to pay $1050, now you pay $1062.50, difference of $12.50, percent difference: 1%
For WBUR, I chalk this up to lazy reporting; just regurgitating what some other news organization reported; expecting them to have done the fact checking. This is professionally inexcusable.
For WBZ (TV) (and there may be others… I haven’t listened/watched), I’d like to think the same. However, I fear it may be part of a deliberate editorial policy to stoke the outrage of the local anti-tax people. This is not only professionally inexcusable, it’s downright evil.
What do you think?
…and that is: When did we start using fraction of cents and how is rounding factored into this!?!?
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p>If I bought a $3 item, the sales tax is .1875 cents…is is rounded up to 19 cents?
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p>More importantly, if I buy a $2 item the correct tax is .1250 cents…is it being rounded down to 12 cents or up by 13 cents.
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p>This seems to be the unknown (and undiscussed) question about an issue that has been beaten to death.
In DC, the sales tax is 5.75%, which is rounded to the nearest whole cent whether up or down.
But, the answer to your question is in the law; I recall seeing it there. If memory serves me, the entire purchase is added up (with thousandths, ten thousandths, etc) and then rounded to the nearest cent.
When I spent a dollar, I used to pay $.05, now I pay $.06. percent difference: 25%
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p>When I spent ten dollars, I used to pay $.50, now I pay $.63. percent difference: 25%
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p>When I spent a hundred dollars, I used to pay $5, now I pay $6.25. Percent difference: 25%.
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p>When I spent a thousand dollars, I used to pay $50, now I pay $62.50. Percent difference: 25%.
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p>First off, I’m not going to touch “elementary high school math”, granted it’s indicative of your obvious problem with words, and get to the nitty gritty.
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p>I buy a $1,000 tv from Best Buy. I pay $62.50 in taxes. My total bill is for $1,062.50. That 1,062.50 is not entirely taxes, only the 62.50 is, so to say that my taxes only went up by 1% because that is the reflection on the entire bill is inaccurate. The taxes went up by 25%, and the total bill goes up by 1%.
I think the diarist’s complaint is in the framing. 25% sounds huge, but for most routine purchases it adds just a few cents to the bill. It’s probably better to just report that the sales tax increased from 5% to 6.25% and let people do their own math.
multiplied by a thousand dollars for a television means going to New Hampshire for a lot of people, where instead of quibbling over whether the tax increase is 1% or 25% – there is no tax. For %62.50 – people will make the drive to NH. Bonus for them….bad for the stores in the border towns.
Those who live near the state line routinely shop in NH for everything. Of course it’s somewhat cyclical. Because of the tax difference there’s lots of retail conveniently located on the state line. In fact Pheasant Lane in Nashua is so close that half the parking lot is in Tyngsboro.
at Pheasant Lane because a corner of it would have been in MA, and everything the store sold would have been subject to sales tax.
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p>Do people avoid eating in NH because of its 8% 9% meals tax? Or camping there because that’s now subject to the same tax?
Speaking only for myself I do sometimes consider which side of the stateline I eat on, but if I’m shopping anyway I’ll stick with the mall food court.
but looking at the Google aerial photo, it does look like that part of the building has a corner cut off, not the Sears part. It also looks like Google has moved the state line north a ways, so both parts of the mall extend into Tyngsboro.
At the time, I lived in Dunstable — a neighboring MA town. The store, at the time, was Lechmere’s.
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p>The state line goes through the store, behind the registers.
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p>The Commonwealth of MA forced Lechmere to adjust the registers so that registers in MA charged sales tax, registers in NH did not. As I recall, there was some discussion about relocating the registers to be inside NH. I don’t remember the outcome.
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p>It turned out to be moot, because Lechmere (like virtually every other store in Pheasant Lane Mall with outlets in MA) raised the price by 5% (in comparison with the MA price) so that the consumer paid the same price (including taxes) in either place.
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p>The consumers who came to Pheasant Lane mall to save money paid exactly the same amount. It was the merchants, not consumers, who benefited from having no NH sales tax.
It always seemed like the prices in Peasant Lane Mall were a little higher than they were in Mass. I didn’t do any rigorous checking, but it was enough to keep me mostly out of the place.
JCPenney has always been in its current location. I think the confusion arises because people assume the mall runs north-south, parallel to the DW Highway with Sears on the south end and Lechmere/Target on the north. The mall is actually a slight horseshoe with JCP at the bulge. If you think of the JCP cutoff as a line segment and imagine it continuing on both ends that is essentially the state line, possibly moved into NH a few feet but parellel nevertheless. You will notice that the entire building is on only one side of that imaginary line.
You’re not a math major. Or an economics major. Let me guess? Liberal arts. Anyway, please divide the difference between the new rate and the old rate (1.25) and the old rate (5). Tell me what you get. Now do it again, just to be sure.
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p>This is a pretty good link for remedial help:
http://www.themathpage.com/Alg…
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p>You can’t mitigate the tax by watering it down with the overall cost of the product. (Watch those rules of algebra!) A 25% increase is EXACTLY what this tax is. And people in the upper half of Massachusetts will be heading to NH. The Boston Globe is reporting that the Massachusetts license plates in the Rockingham Mall outnumber the NH plates. Page B7.
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p>I think your outrage WBUR is misplaced. They can do the math. And so can alot of other people.
It’s a 25% increase of a tax.
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p>It’s a 20% increase of a 5% tax.
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p>That is ‘EXACTLY’ what this is.
But 20% of 5 is 1. (dividing 5 into 5 equal parts, 20% each) The increase is a total of 6.25%, not 6%. Hence -it is a 25% increase of a 5% tax. 5 * 25%= 6.25%.
then it’s a 25% tax increase.
… its not a 25% tax increase. It’s an increase of 25% on a tax.
the last resort of an obfuscator.
… that a 25% tax is ‘EXACTLY’ what it is.
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p>While we’re being exact, details actually matter. To gloss over them while making claims of exactness is a time honored technique of intellectual legerdemain.
This debate seems to fall on the same lines as flat tax discussions. Those who only are concerned about the literal math say the flat tax is very fair because everyone pays the same percentage. What could be fairer than that? However, those of us who see further implications beyond just the math point out that the same percentage means very different things based on the total amount in question.
Jesus Christ, I hope you’re not a teacher. Damn.