Special sales tax districts approved by state legislators last year may have limited potential uses as incentives for certain types of retail businesses in Lawrence, but they also have the potential to be overused — to the detriment of Lawrence shoppers.

The new state law allows city governments to approve Community Improvement Districts in which businesses are allowed to charge additional sales tax of up to 2 percent on the goods they sell. The additional money that tax raises goes directly back to the businesses/developers for a variety of purposes. They can use that money to pay off the costs of initial development, such as landscaping, murals and other structures, or to offset ongoing costs of doing business, such as cleaning contracts, security costs or even advertising to promote tourism, recreational or cultural activities.

In other words, about any business would like to have this extra revenue, and, under the broad criteria outlined in the city’s draft resolution, about any business could make a case that it qualified. City officials have little to lose because there is no public risk and it takes no tax revenue away from the city. As City Manager Dave Corliss said of the businesses, “They’re basically just agreeing to tax themselves.”

No, really, they are agreeing to tax their customers, and there is no requirement to let customers know about it. Unless they carefully examine their store receipt, they would never know they are paying more for a product because of additional taxes that are being tacked on.

Instead of following the sound business practice of charging prices that cover the normal costs of doing business, stores in a Community Improvement District can charge a lower price, perhaps a price lower than their competitors charge, and then use additional sales tax to increase their profit margin.

The goal of the new districts is to provide an incentive for unique development or infill development that might not otherwise occur. A long-desired grocery store in North Lawrence might fall into that category. Would it be a good idea to add a regressive sales tax on food sold at such a store? Even if North Lawrence residents are willing to pay a slight premium for the convenience of having a store in their neighborhood, it would be more honest to simply charge slightly higher prices than to add a surreptitious sales tax.

There may be some narrow applications of the districts that would be both useful and fair — perhaps for a truly unique development that would attract sales tax dollars from outside Lawrence and not use the sales tax benefit to undercut competing businesses — but it seems that such applications would be few and far between.

The overall sales tax rate has been rising at an alarming pace. Local voters recently approved a sales tax increase to fund the city’s bus service and street repair, and state officials are looking seriously at a temporary sales tax increase to balance the state budget. It would be hard to pass a sales tax now to cover government services. It makes no sense for the city to broadly approve such a tax to cover costs incurred by private business owners.