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Why sales tax and tips are local money

Sales tax looks like one number on a receipt and almost never is. This database holds 20,189 taxing jurisdictions, and only 52 of them are states. The rest — 13,047 cities, 3,442 counties and 3,648 special districts and transit authorities — are local governments levying their own share of the same purchase.

That share funds the place the sale happened in. A city rate pays for that city's services; a transit authority's share pays for the buses that run past the shop; a county's pays for the county. When someone buys locally rather than out of the area, the local portion of what they pay stays with the jurisdictions they live among. It is the most direct connection most people have between a purchase and the streets outside.

Tips work more directly still. A tip is income to the person who served you, paid the same day, spent in the same town more often than not. Whether it is calculated before or after tax changes what they take home — on a $60 meal at a 9% rate, tipping 20% after tax rather than before is a little over a dollar more. The calculator shows both so the choice is a choice rather than an accident.

For a small business the same detail is a liability rather than a courtesy. A seller who collects too little owes the difference regardless of whether they charged the customer for it, and rates change on quarter days across thousands of jurisdictions at once. That is the reason this site exists, and how sales tax works explains the mechanics in full.

Our sponsors

40 businesses. Descriptions are quoted from each sponsor's own site and are not endorsements: this site does not verify what a sponsor sells.

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