St. Joseph voters will be asked to vote on only one measure Tuesday, a tax on out-of-state purchases.
“Right now there is a use tax by the state and a use tax by the county but there is not a use tax by the city,” said Bruce Woody, St. Joseph City Manager. “For most people you’ll never really have a use tax that’s applicable because most people buy things at retail and pay sales tax at the point-of-service.”
Woody said the use tax will close a loophole that allows business that buy out of the state to escape paying sales tax but not affect anyone who already pays sales tax.
“Say a construction company buys steel for a building out of Pennsylvania and brings it back to St. Joseph to build a building they would pay a use tax because they bought it out of state but the city loses out on that use tax because we don’t have a local use tax approved,” Woody said.
If passed, the tax would generate an estimated $700,000 a year to be used to repair and maintain city streets.
“The city council recognizes that they need to make a larger investment in street maintenance and they’ve dedicated all the additional revenue from the use tax to street maintenance,” Woody said. “So it would be a way for us to increase the number of miles of asphalt overlay that we do each year.”
Also, Woody said if the city use tax does not pass, by 2016 the city will lose out on about $600,000 a year dedicated to the city’s general fund which is used for public safety.
“At the present due to a senate bill that was passed in 2013 sales tax is still collected by the Department of Motor Vehicles and remitted to both the state, the county and the city but after November of 2016 they will no longer collect sales tax for any location that does not have local use tax approved,” Woody said. “There will be less income off of vehicles that are purchased out of state and brought back into the city and that would make it more difficult to cover expenses for public safety.”
Woody said that if voters have not felt an impact from Buchanan County’s use tax similarly they won’t feel an impact from a city use tax.
Wording on the ballot for Tuesday’s election reads as such, “Shall the City of St. Joseph, Missouri, impose a local use tax on out-of-state purchases for a period of 10 years at the same rate as the local sales tax rate, currently Two and Eight Hundred Seventy-Five One Hundredths of One Percent (2.875%), in order to preserve existing general fund revenues and provide revenues for streets maintenance activities and to eliminate an inequity between in-state and out-ofstate businesses due to a recent Missouri Supreme Court decision, provided that if any local sales tax is reduced or raised by voter approval, the respective local use tax rate shall also be reduced or raised by the same action? A use tax return shall not be required to be filed by persons whose purchases from out-of-state vendors do not in total exceed Two Thousand Dollars ($2,000.00) in any calendar year.”
Buchanan County Clerk Mary Baack-Garvey said the courthouse will be open Saturday, April 4th from 8 a.m. to noon for Absentee Voting. The deadline to submit ballots absentee is Monday April 6th. Baack-Garvey said the office will be open until 5 p.m. on April 6th.
Election Day is Tuesday, April 7th. Polls will be open from 6:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M.