Proposal to take sales tax revenues draws objections

Once again the The Outer Banks Sentinel nails a big story. Medicare costs are eating up North Carolina counties and someone has come up with a fix; The counties give up one of the one cent sales taxes they collect and the State uses the funds to pay Medicare forever. It sounds great except in a few places the tax raises more than Medicare costs. In Dare County it raises a lot more (about $6 million). The county would lose the revenue and would have to impose another one cent sales tax to make it up. (Sound familiar) The county has no desire to go through another referendum. The idea has not been picked up in the mainstream news media yet. In part because a lot of counties would benefit from the deal.