Quick glimpse at this favorite and corrupt scam in need of a crackdown. Checkit:
Special taxing districts multiply - St. Louis Business Journal
The number of community improvement districts across Missouri has more than tripled since 2008, and the special taxing areas spent some $75.6 million in 2015, according to newly obtained data. The number of community improvement districts across Missouri has more than tripled since 2008, and the special taxing areas spent some $75.6 million in 2015, according to newly obtained data.
Community improvement districts function mostly to allow a retailer to charge a higher sales tax and keep the difference for themselves. The retailer could just as easily raise the sales price by an equivalent amount but then they would need to be honest with the customer. So in effect cities are helping the retailer to defraud the customer.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind amazing how liberal democrats will create new taxes or raise taxes for 'improvements', yet whenever they enforce their liberal tax policies, things go to shit really quick. Kansas City will become another shithole like Detroit really quick if it elects another dumbass liberal like Sly James.
ReplyDelete1:41's point may be well-taken, but I'm not really sure Sly is a liberal, conservative, or much of anything else.
ReplyDeleteSly's an empty vessel for pretty much anyone who comes along with a smile, a shoeshine, and a good story to tell about how to spend someone else's money so that KCMO "won't be left behind".
And Sly's level of understanding or even interest in the actual responsibilities of the executive of a municipality is demonstrated daily in the upside down priorities and the way tax money is squandered in KCMO.
It's hard to believe that a couple "transit activists" from Cowpie, Nebraska can stampede the electeds of what they consider a major city into spending hundreds of millions of dollars on streetcars when the most basic needs of the community aren't even being addressed.
And how those same folks can be jerked around by the Chamber swells and "developers" and convinced that spending and borrowing for "projects" that are highly unlikely to be financially sustainable.
CID's are nothing more than people in a specified area taxing themselves AGAIN to try to provide the most basic of services that their city taxes should already be providing.
Which shell is the pea under today?
CIDs for the most part are not businesses taxing themselves, they are taxing their customers who are unaware that they are paying extra. And most times the CID funds do directly back to the business or building owner.
ReplyDeleteActually, one of the early CIDs in KCMO was the one downtown, which then gave the Downtown District funds to pay for their "ambassadors" to help keep the sidewalks clean of trash, provide additional security, and overall try to make the area more attractive.
ReplyDeleteAnd most CIDs have organizations with executive directors and staff, all of who are paid out of the funds collected.
And, of course, the money comes from customers if businesses are affected.
Only relatively recently has the CID statute been stretched to enable such scams as the Intercontinental Hotel creating itself as a CID and using the funds for renovation of their own building.
Of course, in KCMO when folks can manipulate the TDD statute to surreptitiously fund a streetcar anything is possible and the unaccountable folks at 12th and Main are creating new ways to get to the taxpayer each and every day.
How about private funding for the airport?
You ain't seen nothing yet!
I've proposed a kind of "taxing district" for the Sports Complex, Sprint Center, and other sports venues around the state; which could enable those facilities to charge "sales tax" on parking, tickets, concessions, and other merchandise bought at those venues. And that's how those facilities are funded. No tax dollars of any kind go to maintain, support of enhance the stadiums. In effect, "privatize" them. Meaning only those who go to games would help foot the bill. I myself, being someone who does to go Royals and Chiefs games, wouldn't mind a bit of a "sales tax" on what I buy there if I knew that no tax dollars were going to the complexes, and could go to other things.
ReplyDeleteThe real scam is nothing is improving.
ReplyDelete