A: Wishful thinking. When sales tax is collected in Georgia, our Department of Revenue meticulously records and makes public how much revenue comes in and which segments of the retail economy it comes from. But no data on the residency of the taxpayers is ever collected. A skilled economist could use data from the department of revenue and the census bureau to build a statistical model of residential spending and sales tax payment. Subtract that modeled residential sales tax revenue from the actual sales tax revenue and we know would have a well-reasoned estimate of outsider sales tax contribution. This kind of estimate is the best answer anyone can hope for when asking for the rate at which people from outside our county pay our sales taxes.

In September of 2024, Tift County manager Jim Carter admitted he had made the estimate of 40-60% all by himself and provided his conclusions to the Tift County Board of Commissioners. His report to the commissioners did not cite any analysis made by any economist. He did not share an estimate from a reputable institution such as the Georgia Municipal Association, the Association of County Commissions of Georgia, the Carl Vinson Center, the Georgia Department of Revenue, or anyone else. He did not provide the commissioners any reasoning for his own calculations. He did not even provide them any calculations. All he used was a magazine article from 2007 and a sales tax report from the Department of Revenue. To come up with his estimate, he read a fact from the Department of Revenue’s Sales Tax Commodity Report that our sales tax revenue from the auto sector is 3.7 times the state average and decided that about half our total sales tax revenue must come from visitors.

In short, the estimate of 40-60% is an unjustified and uneducated guess made by an unqualified county employee who has no expert guidance and doesn’t show his work.

A: SPLOST VII is a proposed new 1% tax on almost every retail transaction in Tift County to be imposed from 2025 through 2030. Georgia counties have the option to impose a 1% sales tax called Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) in order to pay for capital outlay spending. For a complete explanation, visit Georgia Tech's SPLOST Clearinghouse.

A: Yes. Sales taxes on groceries and fuel would drop from 4% to 3% beginning in January of 2025 if SPLOST VII is rejected. Sales taxes on just about everything else subject to sales tax, from Amazon to Zaxby's, would drop from 8% to 7%. (SPLOST VII would have no effect on sales tax paid on automobiles.)

A: Probably not. Unlike the Local Option Sales Tax (LOST), the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax has no direct statutory connection to property taxes. As such, property taxes could never go up automatically just because voters reject a SPLOST referendum. City and county officials could, in theory, replace the $70M of expected SPLOST VII revenue by increasing property taxes. But each member of the Tift County Board of Commissioners and the Tifton City Council, as well as a candidate for City County, has been asked whether they would support raising property taxes if the SPLOST VII referendum fails. Not one of them said they would even consider supporting increased property taxes. Considering that Tift County is currently sitting on an unassigned fund balance of over $30M, essentially money in the bank that has not been earmarked to cover any specific spending, it is hard to imagine the Board of Commissioners changing course and supporting any kind of property tax millage increase any time soon. Anyone who discovers on-the-record statements by commissioners, council members, or candidates is invited to submit those statements to burchell@TiftCountySalesTaxPayers.com in order for the whip count to be updated.

A: Estimate your spending to calculate your estimated tax burden under SPLOST VII. You can use this calculator to estimate how much sales tax your family would need to pay into SPLOST VII over the four years of its reign. The default settings are based on an estimate made using the website of the Economic Policy Institute of the spending of a family of four, two parents and two children, spending about $66,000 per year that would pay about $1300 into SPLOST VII over six years.

A: Tift County residents would pay about 81.3% of all the SPLOST VII tax collected. Because so many visitors stop and spend in our county, they paid about 18.7% of the sales tax in Tift County in 2021 while those of us who live here paid the rest. Carl Vinson Institute Senior Public Service Associate Dr. Wes Clarke, using data from the Georgia Department of Revenue, calculated what he calls a "pull factor" for Tift County of 1.23 (listed on page 6 of this report.) In other words, visitors paid about 23¢ in sales tax for every 100¢ we paid that year. That works out to 81.3% paid by us and 18.7% paid by them. By comparison, we pay a smaller proportion of our county's property tax at less than 79.7%. That's because less than 80% of the real estate wealth in Tift County is actually owned by people and companies that call Tift County home.

A: There is no way to know for sure. Leaders from Tift County, Tifton, Ty Ty, and Omega have formed a plan for spending the $70M of revenue expected to come in during the 6-year reign of SPLOST VII. At the end of August, they signed an interlocal agreement formalizing how the money would be divided and what category of projects it could be spend on. According to statute, SPLOST money can only be used for "capital outlay projects" and not operating expenses. Also, the referendum must state the purpose of the tax. However, enforcement of these requirements is rare. In fact, the governments of Tift County and Tifton have a long history of disputes surrounding the spending of revenue from previous rounds of SPLOST taxation.

A: No. Tifton would get a lower percentage of the revenue and Tift County would get a much higher percentage of the revenue. Tift County got 46.17% of the money in the current SPLOST VI but would get 57.71% of the revenue under SPLOST VII. That is a 25.12% increase. Tifton got 32.78% of the money from current SPLOST VI but would get only 30.00% of the renenue under SPLOST VII. That is a 8.49% decrease. See a detailed comparison between the SPLOST VI and SPLOST VII revenue distributions on this spreadsheet.