Councilman Mitch Magness addressed the community during the Feb. 13 City Council meeting about Harrison having the lowest sales tax of any city similar in size in Arkansas.
“There’s been a lot of discussion recently on social media, and I’ve received some phone calls,” Magness said. “Most people wanted to know if we were, indeed, the lowest in taxes in the state.”
“I told them, ‘Yes’ we are the lowest of communities our size. Then, they compared us to Branson. Our tax rate here is 9.5% with the state coming in at 6.5%. Between the Boone County Tax and the City of Harrison tax, that’s three additional percent, bringing it to 9.5%.
Magness explained, “They kept saying Branson had lower taxes than Harrison, and that’s actually not true.”
Mayor Jackson added, “There may be a pocket or two in Branson that may be lower, but the general area is not.”
‘In the Branson corporate city limits, it is 10.35%. The sales tax rate for Missouri is only 4.23%. Which means their city and county taxes are just over 6%. Not only are we lower than the total combined tax, but we are also significantly lower in municipal taxes. My point is that some things people say are factually wrong. Branson’s taxes are higher than Harrison's.”
Jackson said, “The good thing about this is Creekside. We implemented a one-half % tax, a quarter of which will disappear. The good thing about that one-half percent is that we locked it in at the perfect time. We got a lifetime rate of 1.7% on that loan. If we hadn’t done it right then, we wouldn’t have been able to build Creekside.”
Magness said, “Another question I got was ‘if we were adding taxes because of Creekside.’ I told them no, that had already been implemented, and any additional tax would have to be voted on by the people. The bond rate of 1.7% you are talking about will allow us to pay off this bond earlier than we would expect.”
“Because that 1.7% rate and revenue for our area is going up, we will pay that off earlier than expected. We will still have Creekisde looking brand new. Nobody likes taxes, but our little town is doing more than most with less,” Jackson said.