urbanSTL

I presume this will be on the Apr 6, 2021 ballot.

Just wanted to mention that because of the city's illegal rule change - keeping earnings tax from work-from-home days that it had been refunding for more than ten years - I and six coworkers have relocated our work location from downtown to another location in the County. We would have happily continued to pay the tax when we worked in the city, but not when we're not. So the city wants to seize it all...and it will get nothing.

I am more than happy to pay the 1% earnings tax, especially given how low the state of Missouri's income taxes are.

Ebsy wrote: ↑

Mar 03, 2022

I am more than happy to pay the 1% earnings tax, especially given how low the state of Missouri's income taxes are.

I was more than happy to pay it to the city when I worked in the city. During that time, I would not have been happy had part of my salary been seized by U City or Clayton or Chesterfield based on a claim that some of the infrastructure I tangentially used while working happened to cross their boundaries.

imran wrote: ↑

Mar 03, 2022

On the other hand back in 2009 when I had a place in Creve Coeur as well as in the city, I had the option of designating either my primary residence and I chose the city address. could have legally worked around paying the earnings tax (work in the county) but figured the needs of the City out-weighed my desire to keep an extra few thousand in the bank per year.

I might be a socialist hmm

Solidarity, comrade. I have no issue with paying a 1% tax to support the heart of our region, and wouldn't even if I didn't live or work here. 

It's 1% FFS, most people without an ideological axe to grind don't even notice it. If you're earning enough income to pay thousands per year, then you're doing quite well and should count your blessings rather than complain. Even if you're a committed anti-tax, anti-government, Ayn Rand-worshipping Objectivist, surely there are more significant (and ridiculous) taxes at the state and federal level that deserve your attention and disdain more than the paltry City earnings tax.

sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Mar 04, 2022

^ On top of that, St. Louis’ is relatively low compared to many similar taxes in other older, more eastern aligned cities.

DC - 8.5% for income over $40,000.  6% for $10,000 to $40,000 in income.
NYC - 3.8%
Philly - 3.8%
Baltimore - 3.2%
Cleveland - 2.5%
Detroit - 2.4%

In Portland, OR the local transit agency (Tri-Met) charges 0.6918%.  Not a terrible way to fund transit in my opinion.

Denver and Charleston, WV (among others) both charge a fee per pay period or per month.

Like St. Louis…KC, Newark and Birmingham levy a 1% tax.

Wilmington has a 1.25% rate.

I'm guessing they all charge people who work in the respective boundaries, not based on some fabricated, and false, justification of using fiber optic lines that cross the city boundary. They're not even using the "help out the heart of the region" plea, so to back into that reason seems to be..a convenient excuse.

sc4mayor wrote: ↑

Mar 05, 2022

^ I wasn’t here to b**** about excuses…only to point out that St. Louis is on the lower end of the income tax spectrum.

Take it up with the city if you’re that pissed off about it haha.

The lawyers are haha. And the city won't have to worry about seizing our anymore going forward.

StlToday - Republicans again taking aim at St. Louis earnings tax


https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... ef3ff.html

quincunx wrote: ↑

Aug 28, 2023

StlToday - Republicans again taking aim at St. Louis earnings tax


https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/gov ... ef3ff.html

Why are the Republicans defunding the police?

This will be good for the city though. Now we can be broke like Clayton.

I’d like to get rid of the earnings tax one way or another but obviously this would be disastrous to the city as it recovers from covid


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The city hasn’t had the finances to get rid of the earnings tax since long before COVID

I’m not in the know on the cities finances, but I would hope that all the stuff that has been built in the last decade will start to come off their tax abatements and property values in the south side and central corridor will continue to rise to the point where we could phase it out ten million at a time over twenty years. I don’t know how realistic that is though


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To replace earnings tax revenues, double utilities, sales, and propriety tax revs.
2x utilities tax
Inc sales taxes by 1.375% points - 14% inc.
Inc property taxes by 1.47% points - 17.8% inc.

I don't think the state allows rates that high.

We should absolutely not get rid of the earnings tax, certain not to replace it with much more regressive sales and/or property taxes.

The earnings tax is on be of the areas where St. Louis has a clear advantage over peer cities - it is a stable, broad-based source of revenue that is at least semi-progressive. Thanks to the earnings tax, St. Louis is in far better financial shape than many other US cities.

pmbender wrote: ↑

Aug 29, 2023

We should absolutely not get rid of the earnings tax, certain not to replace it with much more regressive sales and/or property taxes.

The earnings tax is on be of the areas where St. Louis has a clear advantage over peer cities - it is a stable, broad-based source of revenue that is at least semi-progressive. Thanks to the earnings tax, St. Louis is in far better financial shape than many other US cities.

I'm curious how the earnings tax is less regressive than property tax? I'd say they're about equal. There's no exception for people making, say, minimum wage. Personally I'd rather see a floor on earnings for the earnings tax.

bprop wrote: ↑

Aug 29, 2023

pmbender wrote: ↑

Aug 29, 2023

We should absolutely not get rid of the earnings tax, certain not to replace it with much more regressive sales and/or property taxes.

The earnings tax is on be of the areas where St. Louis has a clear advantage over peer cities - it is a stable, broad-based source of revenue that is at least semi-progressive. Thanks to the earnings tax, St. Louis is in far better financial shape than many other US cities.

I'm curious how the earnings tax is less regressive than property tax? I'd say they're about equal. There's no exception for people making, say, minimum wage. Personally I'd rather see a floor on earnings for the earnings tax.

The 1% earnings tax is inherently (mostly*) progressive on income; that is, a person will always be paying 1% of their income to the city, regardless of how high or low that income is.

A property tax is inherently regressive on income for several related reasons:

1. It is a fixed rate based on the assessed value of your property (currently $8.2611 per $100 of assessed value). This increases (or decreased) with property value, which doesn't tightly track income (though they are correlated).

2. It rises to a higher percentage of income for people whose income doesn't change but who inherit property or live in a gentrifying area; these effects are desirable for higher income owners, but can force lower income owners out of properties and eliminate their ability to capitalize on increased equity.

3. Housing is almost always a higher percentage of income for lower income property owners than for higher income property owners. That is because house values generally span a lower range of magnitudes than incomes (e.g., $100k - $10million for house values is 2 orders of magnitude, while $20k-$2million in annual salary is 3 orders of magnitude)

*Technically, since the marginal utility of additional dollars of income decreased at a certain point, a flat percentage income tax is not fully progressive - to get that you need bracketed taxes like federal income tax (and, to be fair, more higher-end brackets than the IRS currently employs.)

pmbender wrote: ↑

Sep 01, 2023

bprop wrote: ↑

Aug 29, 2023

pmbender wrote: ↑

Aug 29, 2023

We should absolutely not get rid of the earnings tax, certain not to replace it with much more regressive sales and/or property taxes.

The earnings tax is on be of the areas where St. Louis has a clear advantage over peer cities - it is a stable, broad-based source of revenue that is at least semi-progressive. Thanks to the earnings tax, St. Louis is in far better financial shape than many other US cities.

I'm curious how the earnings tax is less regressive than property tax? I'd say they're about equal. There's no exception for people making, say, minimum wage. Personally I'd rather see a floor on earnings for the earnings tax.

The 1% earnings tax is inherently (mostly*) progressive on income; that is, a person will always be paying 1% of their income to the city, regardless of how high or low that income is.

I appreciate your points about the property tax. I guess I could be on board with the earnings tax being, in some cases, more progressive than a property tax. But the literal definition of a progressive tax is one whose rate rises as income/value/worth/whatever goes up - as you fairly point out. A 1% tax across the board is not truly a progressive tax, especially, IMO, if it's taxing people making minimum wage at the same rate. So relatively I agree with you but I think an earnings tax needs to be adjusted, somehow, before it would be fair to use it and 'progressive' in the same sentence.