LOS ANGELES, California — Consumers in Los Angeles County were shocked Tuesday as a new quarter-percent sales tax, ostensibly to raise funds for services for the homeless, went into effect following a referendum in November.
L.A. voters passed Measure A, which replaced and increased an earlier county-wide sales tax for the homeless. That tax, passed a decade ago, failed to stem the growth of the homeless population and may even have encouraged it.
As Breitbart News reported in November:
The UK Sun noted the effect of the tax on consumers’ pocketbooks:
The sales tax went up from 9.5% to 9.75% to increase funding to prevent homelessness.
The increase was approved by voters, but shoppers still aren’t happy with the raised prices.
“I didn’t vote for this!” one disgruntled resident wrote on Facebook.
Two cities in the county, Lancaster and Palmdale, are now paying a sales tax of 11.25% — the highest in the U.S.
Separately, another tax supposedly for the benefit of the homeless, Measure ULA, is impeding the rebuilding effort in Los Angeles after the recent, devastating wildfires. The so-called “mansion tax” has depressed real estate transactions.
L.A. residents recently learned that $2.3 billion spent on homeless services in Los Angeles had been unaccounted for — and the money had come from the same sales taxes that referendums like Measure A had been designed to fund.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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