Tax of the Week - NJ Sales Tax Increases to 7%

In order to highlight the comfort our elected politicians in NJ have with raising taxes, I am going to highlight a "tax of the week" so that everyone can understand what exactly goes on in Trenton in regards to the government spending our money. I chose as my first last year's Sales Tax Increase. Born out of an impasse with Governor Corzine, the legislature and the Governor decided to increase the sales tax. All sales taxes are particularly sneaky as they are asessed on money you were already taxed on to begin with when you earned it.

This particular tax was worse. The public was originally informed that it would be used to lower property taxes. That was completely untrue. The best any of NJ towns got out of this effort has been a brief reprieve in property tax increases for this year (mine went up). In addition, it wasn't just a 1% tax increase, this tax was now being applied to a range of new items (health clubs, shopping clubs, parking, laundry, delivery services, landscaping etc.). Read more at the National Federation of Business site here.

To date, no legislator has paid a price for this. Judging from this year's election campaign advertisements, I think that will only be true for a short period of time. I am going to try to get the results of the vote so that everyone can find out why their health club costs went up last year.

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