Reno: Local Sales Tax Hikes on the Agenda

Reno city government faces a cash crunch, and elected officials are talking about making another push to increase the city sales tax rate by up to a quarter of a cent. (A quarter cent would push Reno's sales tax rate to 7.625 percent.)

The goal is worthy: city officials want "to hire more police officers and build three new police stations in Reno." But the means is troublesome. Nevada sales and excise taxes are already among the highest in the nation, even though Nevada taxes aren't especially high overall. And there are rumblings that the way in which local sales taxes are allocated between cities and counties isn't all that fair:

Cashell said legislators he declined to name were amenable to changing the complex sales tax formula for distributing revenues in Washoe County to give the cities a bigger share...Cashell said businesses outside the two cities generate only 4 to 5 percent of the sales tax yet the county keeps 60 percent of the local government share.

And, of course, the sales tax proposal would make things even worse from a tax fairness perspective. Adequate funding for police protection is pretty fundamental, but so is the goal of not taxing poor families further into poverty. And there's no quicker way to do the latter than further sales tax increases.