What the heck is fifty-five hundredths of a percent?

Voters may be struggling with that question as they go to the polls on Nov. 4 to decide the fate of three sales tax questions that would increase the sales tax rate in the city by that amount.

The answer varies. Sometimes fifty-five hundreds of a percent amounts to a few cents. Sometimes it amounts to a few dollars. It all depends, of course, on what you buy and how often you buy it.

As a reminder, the three sales taxes that residents will be voting on Nov. 4 are:

¢ Question No. 1: A three-tenths of a percent sales tax to fund streets, fire truck purchases and other infrastructure projects.

¢ Question No. 2: A two-tenths of a percent sales tax to fund basic operations of the city’s public transit system.

¢ Question No. 3: A five-hundredths of a percent tax that would provide enhanced operations to the transit system. This tax will be enacted only if Question No. 2 also is approved.

In an effort to bring a little clarity to what it all means to your pocketbook, the Journal-World over the past week calculated how much new tax would be added to some common, regularly purchased items, if all three sales taxes are approved. Several examples are included in the photo gallery within this story. More examples can be found in the accompanying breakout.

As part of that exercise, we also learned something else about fifty-five hundredths of a percent – it can be sneaky. For instance, how many people remembered that the extra sales tax would be charged on utility bills like gas, electric, phone and cable? Over the course of a year, it is a pretty safe bet that the proposed taxes would add at least $15 or $20 to the average total paid for utilities.

But other frequently purchased items wouldn’t trigger the new tax at all. For example, according to state law, prescription drug purchases aren’t charged a sales tax. Also, gasoline prices won’t be affected by the sales tax issue. We pay state and federal excise taxes every time we visit the gas pump, but sales taxes are not charged on gasoline purchases.

And probably most people know that the sales tax won’t affect what is usually the biggest monthly check cut in most households – the mortgage check. Sales tax isn’t charged on your monthly home payment.

Property taxes, though, are. That brings us to the other bit of research we conducted this week. We wanted to look at how much the city would have to raise property tax rates in order to generate the approximately $7.2 million that the three sales taxes are expected to generate in their first full year. The results are on page 1A.

So, what’s fifty-five hundredths of a percent? The real answer will be revealed on Nov. 4: Either a winner or a loser.