Senate Bill 126: You down with this SB? Yeah, you know me… So you know that it is complicated.

There has been a great deal of interest in the distribution of local sales tax revenue in North Carolina in the past few years.  I will admit that as a scholar of local sales tax policy and effects, it has been an interesting time to be in the state (and made me much more popular!).  Not surprisingly, I have been having a lot of conversations with people across the state about SB 126, so I thought I would put some of my thoughts down on proverbial paper. First things first, over the past few years there have been proposals and changes to the distribution of local sales taxes.  Some of you may recall there was even talk of making all distributions on a per capita basis rather than a mix of per capita and point-of-distribution (for more on local sales taxes please see this, this, this, and this).  While we have seen quite a bit of activity, with particular goals in mind, this tinkering with distribution is nothing new to North Carolina.  Our local sales taxes, or what are commonly referred to as “Articles”, have been adjusted numerous times by eliminating particular Articles, introducing new ones, earmarking revenue from them,