Senator Chris Karr (R-11/Sioux Falls) led the fight three years ago to reduce South Dakota’s state sales tax from 4.5% to 4.2%. Karr got the Legislature and the Governor to agree to that cut only by including a sunset clause: absent other moves by the Legislature, the rate bounces back to 4.5% on July 1, 2027.
Karr has tried before to make the tax cut permanent. He’s trying again this Session: Senate Bill 195, introduced last Thursday, strikes the sunset clause tucked away in 2023 Session Law Chapter 32 Section 19.
Senate Taxation has already shown its distaste for raising sales tax this year; last Wednesday, the committee killed Senator Jim Mehlhaff’s Senate Bill 99, which would have raised sales tax to 6.2% to replace most school property tax. Senate Taxation approved an amendment to exempt food from sales tax and tax other sales at 6.5% but ultimately deferred Sb 99 to the 41st day on a 6–1 vote.
SB 195 is the only other major sales tax revision in the hopper so far, and this week is the final week for introducing new bills.
Gee when they reduce the sales tax, get rid of property taxes South Dakota will be a paradise.
Recall Governor Rhoden chose to target billionaire Illinois Governor JB Pritzker instead of reminding voters that Toby Doeden, Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen, Isabel legislator Ryan Maher, former State Representative Spencer Gosch, State Senator Chris Karr and South Dakota blogger Pat Powers and his wife are hugely obese.
Monday morning,(2/2) Sen. Karr was in Senate Health Committee pushing a bill to continue an interim study of CSP’s (Community Support Providers). He said, more than once, that we don’t have enough money to pay them what they need. But sure, let’s kill one solution to that problem.
Indeed, Susan, Karr’s proposal to extend a tax cut in the midst of general agreement that we’re sinking into a fiscal crisis seems contradictory.