St. Paul Voters To Decide on Additional Sales Tax Hike

St. Paul is one of 37 Minnesota cities planning to raise their sales tax, supposedly to pay for community goods and services. The state has a $19 billion surplus, and during this last legislative session, raised taxes and fees by $10 billion.

The Legislature also imposed a three-quarter of a cent metro-wide sales tax for transit projects and a quarter percent for housing. St. Paul is asking voters to raise sales tax even more than the just passed Metro-wide tax hike.

St. Paul’s 1% tax hike doesn’t seem like a lot, but it would cost you $984 million. Over the course of 20 years, it would raise nearly one billion dollars.

Luckily, voters will need to approve St. Paul’s proposed tax hike before being implemented.

“We are asking for the opportunity to take this question to our St. Paul voters so our St. Paul voters can make that decision for themselves if the dire and urgent needs within our city streets and parks are worth the one penny,” Mayor Melvin Carter of St. Paul said in March about the decision.

It raises the question: why do taxes in St. Paul need to be raised at all?

“Minnesotans will be paying more for the goods and services they’re going to be consuming,” Rep. Pat Garofalo, R-Farmington, said. “Minnesota has always been a high-cost state, but the question is how much of this tax capacity can people absorb before it starts damaging the economy and resulting in people leaving our state?”