Just a couple of weeks after garnering some good press for being a great city for young adults, Kansas City is right back where it feels comfortable: called out in the national media for something bad.
This time, we're noted for having an exceptionally high sales tax.
CCH, a tax services and auditing firm, surveyed
gas taxes, cigarette
taxes and sales taxes around the nation and KC caught its eye. CCH discovered that Chicago
and Los Angeles tied for the highest citywide sales tax at 9.75 percent,
but Kansas Citians can take pride that our sales tax, in what CCH refers
to as "special taxing districts" (read: Power & Light), the sales
tax tops out at
percent. It's good to be special.
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It's even worse than that - how many other cities have an earnings tax? The city fathers (and mothers) piss away prodigious amounts of money and the place is still falling apart.
I'm too old. I remember? when the sales tax was around 3% and the pols said it wouldn't ever need to be higher because the tax receipts automatically rose with prices.
I'm still trying to figure out what more we get in services for the extra 6+ percentage points that we didn't get for 3%.
Maybe the mob needs to take more now than they took then.
A few weeks ago there was a column about a councilman "cherry picking" the facts about "downtown's awesomeness." Yet to say that Kansas City always, or even frequently, gets called out for something bad requires a considerable amount of "cherry picking."
When I read stuff like this I have to ask whether this is just a shtick, or of you guys really believe this. It is quite unfair of The Pitch to scold the councilman for being too optimistic when it does not even give a fair representation of how KC is portrayed in the national media.
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