On May 1st, Nashville voters will go to the polls in a low-turnout election that will decide fate of a proposed transit plan that would, if approved, impose billions of dollars in higher taxes on millions of Nashville residents and visitors.
The Nashville transit plan seeks to raise the sales tax, the hotel tax, the rental car tax, along with further hiking a convoluted local tax on businesses. The plan would raise the combined state and local sales tax rate in Tennessee’s capital to 10.25%, a more than 10% increase from the current rate. That 10.25 percent sales tax would tie Nashville for highest sales tax in the nation according to the Tax Foundation.
The billions of dollars in local tax increases that will be on the May 1st ballot would counteract the positive impact of rate-reducing, pro-growth tax reforms recently enacted at the Federal and State levels, as Americans for Tax Reform’s Patrick Gleason explains in a recent Forbes article:
In this landscape, $8.95 billion dollar transportation plan based on technologies and modes of yesteryear is not something that Nashville or any city needs. At a time when the Elon Musk’s of the world are embarking on new and exciting projects every day and ridesharing platforms are lowering costs while ameliorating parking congestion, imposing billions of dollars in job-killing, economic growth depressing tax hikes to fund a local choo choo that can’t pass an honest cost-benefit analysis is a bad move for the city.
Nashville voters would do well to reject this tax hike-fueled boondoggle on May 1st. For more information on the Nashville transit plan, visit www.NoTax4Tracks.com.