The Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax for Educational Purposes (ELOST)
Even if you do not pay income taxes and property taxes, you support the public school system. A renter, for example, pays a portion of the property tax due on an apartment complex. It is built into the rent payment. It is difficult even to count the ways that we are forced into supporting the public school system. We have the federal income tax, the state income tax, the tax on real property, the Universal Service Fund Tax (Al Gore's telephone tax to wire schools for the internet, which is being used to line the pockets of some school officials, see the link), and in our state of Georgia, a special purpose local option sales tax for educational purposes, commonly known as ELOST.
The Georgia Constitution was amended in the mid 1990s to allow local school boards to propose a 1% sales tax to be devoted to educational purposes. There are two types of projects that can be financed by this tax: capital projects; and debt reduction. (This means that the tax revenues cannot be used to improve education: no extra teachers, no tutors, no supplementary material, no enrichment, and of course, no property tax relief.) The tax has to be approved by a majority of the voters. The list of projects the voters are asked to approved are described in very general terms. The tax runs until the specified amount of money is collected, or for five years, whichever comes first.
Morgan County, Georgia, will soon be in the final year of its third ELOST tax. The first tax was instituted in September, 1997. This tax, and the second ELOST that followed immediately upon the heels of the first tax (March, 2002), were the only two taxes that followed the spirit of the law. Each tax had a list of capital projects and revenue targets that were achievable. ELOST I resulted in tax collections of $5,820,000, while ELOST II collected $8,277,000. ELOST II ended in November of 2005, less than four years after its imposition.
Then the school system administration figured out how to milk the taxpayers, and the "ELOST-as-sinking-fund" was born.