Tax confusion widespread in Peoria

The local media started looking into (and publicizing) the story I posted a couple days ago about Peoria businesses charging too much tax. The Journal Star has two articles here and here, and WMBD Channel 31 did a piece on the 6:00 news tonight (the web version is here).

I just want to reiterate that you should really check your receipts. My mother-in-law took our family out to eat tonight at Chili’s (Glen and University) and they charged her 11% sales tax (it should be 10%). We told the manager, but there was nothing he could do because it has to go through the corporate office.

After reading the article in the paper, my dad checked his receipt from Best Buy — he bought a new HDTV earlier this month — and sure enough, they charged him 9% sales tax. Best Buy has since corrected the issue, and they refunded him the overcharge with no fuss.

Chili’s doesn’t appear on the official list (Exhibit B) that was released by the city today. Neither is CJ Banks (Northwoods Mall), which is charging 9% on clothing. I hear tell that someone’s keeping a list of businesses about whom residents are complaining overcharged them for tax — and it’s getting pretty long. Plus the Journal Star says the city’s Finance Department has received “hundreds” of calls.

It’s easy to see how these big corporations got confused. Take a look at Exhibit A on this memo. That’s the notice that the state sent to all businesses in Peoria letting them know that a small strip of land downtown was going to have a higher tax rate beginning July 1. To those of us who know what the Hospitality Improvement Zone (HIZ) is, this is easy as pie to follow. But suppose your company’s headquarters are in Minnesota. They would have no idea where the HIZ area was, and they would probably figure that if it didn’t affect them, the state wouldn’t be dumb enough to pay the postage to send them a notice that it’s changing.

That appears to be what is happening all over Peoria. So, double-check those receipts!

Would “pay as you throw” make Peoria dirtier?

We have grave reservations about charging Peorians a fee for garbage pick-up, and we think City Council members should, too.

Non-payment will be a problem. Littering will increase. So will illegal dumping: on county roads, in commercial Dumpsters, even on city streets and parking lots. Garbage very possibly will accumulate, indoors, out of sight of inspectors…. Peoria will be a dirtier city if garbage isn’t picked up at every home, every week. It will be a dirtier city if streets and gullies become dumping grounds for people who quit paying their trash collector.

While these dire warnings may sound like they just came out of today’s paper, they didn’t. They were published in the Journal Star on June 24, 2003. The reason? Peoria was considering implementing a $6 per month garbage fee.

I wonder if anyone had the foresight to quantify how much illegal dumping there was before the fee went into effect so we can compare it to how much there is now. That might give us an accurate picture of how much there will be if Peoria goes to some sort of “pay as your throw” system next year. While there have been reports of illegal dumping since the garbage fee went into effect (one even appeared on this blog), it doesn’t appear to be the widespread plague of filth we were warned would happen.

I can’t help but think that maybe — just maybe — concerns about “pay as your throw” causing Peoria to degenerate into some kind of Lord of the Flies scenario might be similarly overstated. Nevertheless, I understand the drawbacks — specifically, the “pay” part of the proposal.

But the truth is that you’re going to pay no matter what. It’s not a matter of paying or not paying; it’s just a matter of how you’ll pay. If it’s not “pay as your throw,” how shall we pay for it? Raise property taxes? Sales taxes? The garbage fee? Pick your poison. Costs are going to go up even if we didn’t change a thing. Adding recycling is going to raise costs more. Property taxes would be a progressive way to pay for it; raising the garbage fee would be regressive. Putting the extra fee on the user would hit large families pretty hard, and in that sense could also be seen as regressive. Raising the sales tax… well… we have to save that for necessities like museums, civic centers, and hotels….

There are no easy answers, only more questions. But I doubt “pay as you throw,” if ultimately adopted, would turn Peoria residences into mini-landfills. Whatever the reason is for rejecting “pay as your throw,” it shouldn’t be that.