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Make California Post a Preferred Source Angelenos started paying one of the biggest sales taxes in the country Thursday – costing some households up to an extra $1,000 a year.
The hike pushes sales tax above 10% on everything from cellphones to cars and clothes to cosmetics, costing shoppers about $1 billion a year.
The countywide rate jumped from 9.75% to 10.25% , rising to 11% in West Hollywood and 11.25% in Santa Monica.
Shoppers in Palmdale are being hammered with an even higher 11.75% rate, believed to be the highest in America.
Critics say voters approved Measure ER – a half-percentage-point sales tax hike – believing the money would plug health care funding shortfalls, with the Los Angeles County Taxpayers Association saying the community had been “deceived” into supporting the measure.
The Democratic-controlled LA County Board of Supervisors put the measure on the June ballot – and it squeaked through by just 25,770 votes, with just over one million voting Yes, imposing the new tax across a county of about 10 million people.
LA County’s new sales tax hit cash registers Thursday, tacking an extra half-cent onto every taxable dollar Angelenos spend after a sneaky $10 million union campaign slammed as “deceitful.”
That’s 50 cents more on every $100 in taxable purchases and $5 more on every $1,000 – so a family that spends $100,000 a year will hand out an additional extra $500. Drive a $40,000 car off the lot, and the tax hike adds another $200.
The tax, which was billed as Measure ER when it was placed on the ballot, saw county leaders promise the money would keep hospitals and clinics “open after Washington slashed health care funding.”
The Democrat-controlled LA County Board of Supervisors, the five-member body that runs county government, put the measure on the ballot.
The board voted 4-1 to send the tax to voters, with Republican Supervisor Kathryn Barger the lone dissenter.
Measure ER squeaked through in June, 50.64% to 49.36% – just 25,770 votes separating the 1,013,747 who backed the measure from the 987,977 who opposed it.
The tax will suck roughly $1 billion a year out of shoppers’ pockets and about $5 billion before the measure finally expires in 2031.
Aidan Chao, chairman of the Los Angeles County Taxpayers Association , said Angelenos voted for Measure ER because of a glossy, deceptive nearly $10 million special-interest campaign backed by health care groups and organized labor.
“They deceived the community into thinking this was a medically focused measure that was all about beating Trump, when in fact it was a new tax that will never go away and will cost families from the low hundreds to $1,000 a year,” he told the California Post.
“It’s not a restrictive short-term health tax; it’s a broad, general forever tax,” he added.
“These taxes are never narrow and short-term; they never go away.”
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“This needs to be a wake-up call to Angelenos and Californians that they can’t continue to be bribed. They can’t be for sale.&…