[RogMar]

I was just saying it seemed high. But then, I'm not in your shoes and if you've got a business going, I'm sure that like everybody else, you're doing the best you can in these times.

I've been in the company of "I don't take a breath of air if I can't deduct it" people for so long that it just shocks me when I get slapped back to reality.

To keep this on topic, do you know when the second half of the sales tax is supposed to be done away with? Seems to me they had some type of "program" wher they knocked it down by 50% with the other 50% to go away in the future.

Or maybe that was a "trust me" campaign promise.

[luvarkansas]

I just bought groceries in Franklin County last weekend, and I paid $1.16 in taxes on a $21.18 purchase. That's somewhere between 5 and 6 percent (I'm no mathematician). I've never even noticed if we pay taxes on groceries in LA! If they eliminated the grocery tax in Arkansas, that would be great....make our trips to the cabin cheaper.

In Monroe, LA, the sales tax is 9.95% or something like that...pretty much 10%, you might as well say. It is that way in all the large towns in LA, I think.

I pay no state taxes on my home....homestead exemption. I pay about $30-$40 a year in taxes on it to my town. I don't pay much in state income taxes, either. Got money back last year, as a matter of fact, hope I do this year, too.

Gee, I hope it's not true about taxes being high in Arkansas....I had halfway hoped to retire there someday. May be better to live in LA the rest of my life and just make trips to the cabin, assuming we're able to keep it that long.

[RogMar]

I haven't noticed that they are high, as such here. When I lived in Chicagoland, I paid one of the lowest real esate taxes among my co-workers, and I was paying $4,000 a year. That was on a house built in the 1800's sitting on a small city lot. In Contrast, many co-workers were paying $6-15,000 a year.

In contrast, on my place here, new construction 1200 foot house, two shopbuildings, on a fenced 150 acres, I just paid $860 + change. Over $600 of that went to the local school district.

They take *really* good care of their students around here. Melbourne just got a new high school. State of the art that would rival any school in the *civilized* world

I'm far past having a school age child, but I guess we all do our part.

I could have sworn that they cut sales tax in half to 3% about a year ago. Maybe that was just on groceries, or something. Maybe they didn't cut it at all and the signs were a "vote for me" thing.

OK.....I just found my googlefinger:

[SIZE=2]Arkansas State SalesTax: 6%

Arkansas State Tourist Tax: 2%

City or Counties have the ability to create their own rate. 0%-5.5%[/SIZE]


I was wrong.........

[in_the_gloaming]

When I lived in Arkansas, I also owned real estate in Oklahoma, hence under Oklahoma Law, if you own a home in Oklahoma and work anywhere else, you are an Oklahoma resident. After living out of a suitcase for four years my taxes were a mess. Hence, I used H. & R. Block to figure it out and that was before everyone had a computer. It turned out to be a wash! I had the lady at H. & R. Block figure state income taxes for four years for (Oklahoma and Colorado 1973-4), (Oklahoma, Colorado and Arizona 1974-5), (Arizona, Oklahoma and Arkansas 1975), and (Oklahoma and Arkansas 1975-7). Much later I worked as a professional income tax preparer for H. & R. Block and that's when I learned to prorate your taxes by reporting the entire amount you earn to each state, much like you do on your federal return, but; the only taxes that are taxable are those which are earned in each state! Hence, if 1/3 of your income is earned in state A, and 2/3 of your income are earned in state B, only 1/3 is taxable in state A, with the remainder being taxable in state B. You aren't hiding anything, just reporting it so they know you are not hiding anything.