{"id":3261,"date":"2018-01-18T23:41:09","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T23:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/52.10.1.109\/?p=3261"},"modified":"2018-01-19T22:52:16","modified_gmt":"2018-01-19T22:52:16","slug":"sales-tax-makes-life-as-we-know-it-possible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/?p=3261","title":{"rendered":"Sales tax makes life as we know it possible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Denver south mayors share their perspective<\/i><\/span><\/h3>\n

by Jan Wondra<\/p>\n

The next time you get ready to click \u201cbuy\u201d on an online purchase, you might want to pause just a moment to consider what the sales tax that would have accompanied a local purchase actually does for your quality of life. As it turns out, sales tax is a major factor in how smoothly your everyday life really runs, from street repairs to street lights, libraries, garbage pickup (in some municipalities) to city events, parks and trails, to funding local police departments and sheriff\u2019s salaries.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mayor Bruce Beckman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSales tax is the lifeblood of cities,\u201d said Centennial Mayor Cathy Noon. \u201cThe Streets at SouthGlenn and Centennial Promenade are our largest shopping areas, and IKEA, Sears, the Walmart Neighborhood Market, are important. Every penny spent in your own city comes back to you. It has a direct impact on your community.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

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Mayor Cathy Noon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cities derive income from a variety of revenue streams, including property tax, sales tax, use tax, head tax, lodging taxes, park fees, building inspections and a variety of permits. Every municipality employs a different mix, but if a city has any level of retail shops, sales tax is a critical component of the annual budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we didn\u2019t have a sales tax, we would be in a difficult position,\u201d said Greenwood Village Mayor Ron Rakowsky. \u201cMost of your city services are significantly <\/span><\/p>\n

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Mayor Ron Rakowsky<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

supported by sales tax\u2014everything from snow plowing, parks, lighting to street improvements. There is no free lunch, you want something, you have to pay for it, you don\u2019t want it (as a city), you don\u2019t pay for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado is a relatively low-tax state compared to others back east, where many cities have a municipal income tax and property taxes often four to five times that of Colorado cities. Most Denver south communities have opted to keep property taxes low and applied the tax to office and retail operations. Even during the recession, sales tax held strong.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe were very fortunate during the recession we didn\u2019t have a large dip, our sales tax revenue held up,\u201d said Littleton Mayor Bruce Beckman. \u201cWe have an environment that nurtures retail businesses. Retail on Santa Fe has done better than they expected and our downtown Littleton retail, our restaurants were up 4 percent through November.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mayor Jim Gunning<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some municipalities are bathing in strong retail sales and all have immediate uses for the revenue.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur sales tax is put right to work, funding not just infrastructure for our small, relatively new city, but a big part of the (sales tax) use is for police services, and we share dispatch services with Parker,\u201d said Lone Tree Mayor Jim Gunning, whose city is home to the regional Park Meadows Mall. \u201cPeople don\u2019t think about what a city does, they just expect it to be done. In our city, we don\u2019t have property taxes and sales tax even pays for garbage services.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While cities count on sales tax revenue, they don\u2019t necessarily spend it immediately.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep reserves to cover the unexpected,\u201d said Mayor Rakowsky. \u201cIf we\u2019re doing our jobs, we always budget with a surplus.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The national struggle for retail volume this past fiscal year, which resulted in closure announcements from major retailers, largely by-passed the Denver area.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Sears, Macy\u2019s and Walmart all announced closings, we weren\u2019t touched; locally those stores do well in our cities,\u201d said Noon.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cIt shows the importance of shopping local. If a chain is looking at cutbacks, they look at the profitability of each store, so shopping locally helps to keep them open.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Most mayors expressed an ongoing concern about the impact of growing online shopping, referred to as leakage, for which, with few exceptions, no sales tax is collected. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTaxing online sales is about marketplace fairness,\u201d said Beckman. \u201cThe concept of taxing online sales is not an additional tax, it\u2019s a compliance tax that should be delivered to our city and our state. Shopping online is not without a local impact.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While municipalities would like their fair share of eCommerce tax revenue, if it were ever collected, how that would be done is subject to debate.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf states get in the middle of collecting our sales tax, even a month delay would be serious,\u201d said Beckman. \u201cWe\u2019re one of the cities significantly impacted by online sales.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

Most Denver south mayors are quite positive about retail development within their cities. In Littleton, Aspen Grove continues to do well, as is the new Meadows at Platte Canyon. In 2017, the new Littleton Village will add another 250,000 square feet of mixed use. Greenwood Village is looking at continued development around its light rail stations, especially the Village Center projects. Lone Tree continues to add retail; this past year the city saw the addition of a new 100,000-square-foot Cabela\u2019s store near the bluffs. Centennial, meanwhile, is looking to shift its dependence on retail strip areas like Arapahoe Road, which accounts for just more than 20 percent of the city\u2019s nearly $34 million in sales revenue last year, toward retail experiences, such as its Streets at SouthGlenn.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRetail creates a sense of place. The last thing you want is for a building to go vacant\u2014a vibrant area attracts more retail and activity,\u201d said Noon. \u201cIt\u2019s cyclical\u2014with vibrancy it\u2019s where everyone wants to be\u2014it makes the case of keeping local retail as a social amenity.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Denver south mayors share their perspective by Jan Wondra The next time you get ready to click \u201cbuy\u201d on an online purchase, you might want to pause just a moment to consider what the sales tax that would have accompanied a local purchase actually does for your quality of life. As it turns out, sales …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3269,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecoloradostatesman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}