LA County’s new sales tax hit cash registers Thursday, tacking an extra half a cent onto every dollar Angelenos spend, after a ”deceitful” $10 million union campaign to sneak it past voters.
The countywide rate jumped from 9.75% to 10.25%, with even higher rates in cities like West Hollywood and Santa Monica.
That’s 50 cents more on every $100 spent and $5 more on every $1,000 – so a family that spends $100,000 a year will fork out an extra $500. Drive a $40,000 car off the lot, and the county pockets another $200.
The tax, which was billed Measure ER when it was placed on the ballot in, 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.
Each supervisor, who taxpayers pay $244,727 a year, voted to send the tax to voters, besides lone lone Republican dissenter, Kathryn Barger.
Measure ER squeaked through in June, 50.64% to 49.36% — just 25,800 votes separating the 1,013,747 who backed the measure from the 987,977 who opposed it.
LA County is home to 9.6 million people, giving the power to approve the measure to about only 10% of the population.
The tax will suck roughly $1 billion a year out of shoppers’ pockets and about $5 billion before the measure finally expires in 2031.
Adan Chao, the chairman of the Los Angeles Taxpayers’ Association, said Angelenos voted for Measure ER because of a glossy, deceptive $10million special-interest campaign spearheaded by the SEIU.
”They deceived the community into thinking this was a medically-focussed 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 with a sunset clause; it’s a broad, general forever tax,” he added.
“These taxes are never narrow and short-term, they never go away”
“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.”
Measure ER has inflated the sales tax in cities like West Hollywood and Pasadena to 11% and Santa Monica to 11.25% as each district already had a sales tax above 9.75%.
“I’d like to know more about where the taxes go. Obviously, I think everyone would like to know,” Nikita Levin, 27, who was shopping at the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica on Thursday, told The Post.
For comparison, sales tax is 7% in Miami, 8.25% in Austin and Houston, and just under 9% in New York City.
Restaurant meals get hit, too, while groceries and prescriptions are exempt.
Critics argue the tax hits lower-income residents the hardest because it eats up a larger share of smaller paychecks – one reason taxpayer groups and even some Democrats opposed it.
The increase is LA County’s second sales tax hike in less than two years.
Voters approved Measure A, a half-cent homelessness tax, in 2024, amid complaints from some smaller cities that they pay far more into the program than they get back.
Backers pitched Measure ER as a lifeline for hospitals and clinics battered by Medi-Cal cuts, with the ballot warning that the county’s four public hospitals could be at risk of closure.
But despite the pitch, there’s actually no requirement for the county to spend a dime of the money on health care.
The tax revenue flows into the county’s general fund, leaving supervisors free to spend it elsewhere.
This made it easier for ER easier to pass because it only needed a simple majority, rather than requiring two-thirds of the vote to pass if it was legally earmarked for health care, a threshold ER fell far short of.
Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Hilda Solis led the push for the tax, with Mitchell calling it a “last resort” as the county had already frozen hiring, cut overtime and dipped into emergency reserves.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger wasn’t buying it, warning there was “no certainty that the dollars will be spent as intended” and that residents are “already carrying one of the heaviest tax burdens” of any major region in the country.
Groups that could benefit from the money largely bankrolled the campaign. St. John’s Community Health, the nonprofit clinic chain that spearheaded the push, contributed at least $4 million.
SEIU Local 721, which represents county workers, kicked in $200,000 and says the tax will protect thousands of members’ jobs.
The California Community Foundation added $200,000, while the county’s doctors’ group contributed $50,000.
Then, a day before the tax took effect, came a new challenge: The Libertarian Party of LA County, which advocates lower taxes and smaller government, sued to overturn it.
Scott Meyers, a Republican running for Congress in California’s 30th District, which includes parts of LA County including Burbank, Glendale and Hollywood Hills, blasted Measure ER as ”yet another ballot proposition that was deceitfully advertised.”
“It was marketed as a promise of direct assistance to emergency rooms and emergency medical technicians. Instead, the taxes raised go directly into the County’s general fund. It’s yet another tax on money we’ve already been taxed on.
“It appears most voters are more willing to surrender their earnings to government than to ever ask how their government is spending their money.”
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