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quier County is $20 for the first $6,000 of receipts plus 20 cents on each additional $100. For professionals the fee is $20 for the first $3,500 of receipts and 30 cents per $100 over that.
Mr. McCarthy said that he looked into both meals taxes and business license taxes shortly after he started working for the county. A meals tax at W2 percent would have yielded $50,000 to the county with little cost in collecting it, he said. However, although towns and cities can enact meals taxes by a vote of the governing bodies, counties can only enact such taxes with a referendum.
He said estimating the potential income from a business license tax is more difficult. For example, he can get information from the state on the volume of business done by contractors based in the county, but he can’t determine how much of the business was done in the county. For other businesses with only one or two existing in the county, the state won’t supply any figures at all, Mr. McCarthy said.
However, he estimates a business license might bring in $30,000, based on a fee of $25 plus 50 cents per $100. He also estimates it will cost the county $20,000 to collect the tax, chiefly because the county would have to hire an additional half-time employee for the Commissioner of Revenue’s office.
Pointing out that the purpose of taxes is to raise money for the government, Mr. McCarthy said, “I think it’s bizarre to enact a tax just to have the tax.”
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