The petition to add an additional one percentage point to the state sales tax faces a court challenge—and it hasn’t even hit the streets yet.
The Missouri Association for Social Welfare claims the petition’s ballot language for the transportation sales tax proposal is too confusing and too unclear for voters to understand what they’re signing. Executivc Director Jeanette Mott Oxford says she’s not sure if the petition is talking about increases in one tax or two, what wording about toll roads really means, and even what “one percent” means. “That may lead some people to believe it’s one percent of the current sales tax when it’s really a one-cent… which really means it’s over 23% increase.”
She calls a sales tax increase “the very worst way to fund something.” She says the poorest Missourians already are paying as much as nine percent of their limited incomes in sales taxes.
She also thinks it was a mistake years ago to set a specific fuel tax without an adjustment built in for inflation. She says the income tax needs to be updated after 82 years….
But those things are separate from the lawsuit….and are unlikely to happen in Missouri’s political climate.
