City revenue - "Your tax dollars"

(click an area on the chart to see an explanation of that revenue)

Types of Taxes

Property Tax
The property tax is the most common of all the taxes.  The average rate levied (in 2000) was $2.61 per $1,000 of assessed valuation.  The tax laws date back many years with many changes to them.  As a result, they are complicated and difficult to understand.  
Click Here for more information about how the property tax works.

Sales & Use Tax
Every city and town in the state levy the basic .5% sales tax.  All but 8 cities levy the optional .5% sales tax.  The optional sales tax is shared with the county, so most cities only receive .85% basic sales tax.  Cities receive about 1/10th of the total sales taxes collected.  Most of the rest goes to the state.
Click Here for more information about how the sales tax works.

Business & Utility Tax
There are three basic types of business and utility taxes.  They are the "Business and Occupation Tax", the "Business License Fees", and "Utility Taxes".  

The B&O tax is levied by 13% of towns.  It is levied on the gross receipts of a business and is limited to 2/10ths of 1% (although some cities are "grandfathered" at a higher rate.

Business License fees of some type (there are a variety of types) are levied by 61% of the cities in Washington.  The include flat fees, graduated fees, fees per employee, fees per square foot, etc.

Utility taxes are levied by 179 cities (of the 279 total).  They can be assessed on your natural gas bill, electricity, telephone, cellular phone, water, sewer, storm drainage and garbage.
Click Here for more information about business and utility taxes.

Other Local Taxes
These include: admissions tax, gambling tax, leasehold tax, real estate tax, hotel-motel tax, and rental car tax.  As you can see from the graph, most cities do not levy significant taxes in these areas.

Licenses and Permits
We covered business licenses above.  Now we add specialty licenses (like taxi cabs, pet licenses, alarm permits, building permits, etc.  As you can see from the graph, this is not a large source of revenue.

Charges & Fees for Services
This category is quite large because we include "enterprises" or business like departments of cities in our analysis.  These are water, sewer and garbage disposal companies that many cities operate.  The charges for the service pays all the costs, so this increases this category.
Click Here for more information about Charges and Fees for Service

Interest & Investment Earnings
Cash that is "temporarily idle" is invested for the benefit of the city (and the taxpayers).  Your city should have an investment policy to guide the safe investment of these funds and insure their safety.  Ask to see it if you are curious.

Fines & Forfeits
Many cities operate traffic bureaus or municipal court systems.  While these are established as a convenience to our "paying customers", they do collect the revenue associated with the "service".  As a result, we use this category to account for it.  You can see that your speeding tickets are not "funding city hall".

Rents & Other Miscellaneous
Cities collect rents whenever they temporarily own leaseable space.  They don't often hold leaseable space for very long, but when they do, they collect rent.  Other Miscellaneous is for, well, other - miscellaneous.

Intergovernmental Revenue
This includes grants, "state shared revenue" and other money that comes from other governments.  State shared revenues are money collected by the state and "shared" back with cities, often on a per capita basis.  Examples include gas tax, liquor excise tax and others.

Debt Proceeds
I know - only in government would you count debt as a revenue.  Well, actually it isn't a revenue, even in government.  But debt represents a source of funds that needs to be counted into the equation.  In many cases this represents bonds authorized by voters which help pay for important local improvements.  But the repayment of those bonds will occur over many years (often 20 years) and usually from property taxes.  So we include debt so the budget is balanced.

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