Food Tax Fund Food Tax is a sales tax collected on the purchase of food for home consumption and is used to fund capital maintenance for our streets, city owned buildings, parks, and other capital assets. The revenue cannot be used for other governmental purposes. While the City rate is currently at 3.46%, only 3% of the tax is applied to capital maintenance. The balance is distributed to the Quality of Life and Public Safety purposes, 0.30% and 0.16%, as voters approved in 2002 and 2004, respectively. Nine months of 2016 Food Tax collection accounted for a total of $5,104,142 or 80.3% of the 2016 budget of $6,357,052. This source of revenue is growing faster than regular sales tax due to better reporting. In the second half of 2015, we began to work with businesses that were not separately reporting their food tax from other sales tax. Thus, the first nine months of 2016, we are receiving higher food tax revenue and lower regular sales tax revenue, from improved reporting in the amount of $273,000. When this additional revenue is removed, the City is seeing a food tax growth rate of 5% for the first nine months of 2016. The correct reporting from businesses will reallocate at least $350,000 from general sales to food tax sales receipts by the end of 2016. Other revenue from 2015 includes $1.9 million in general fund onetime carryover monies allocated to street maintenance. Total Food Tax collections are expected to exceed budget expectations in 2016.
13