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Sales tax has never been pleasant, especially in the Los Angeles area. Recently sales tax has been hiked up and it’s just ridiculous now. Here’s an overview:

In 2008, the California state sales tax was 7.25%. The state allows counties and cities to add their own sales tax on top of that if needed. So Los Angeles county has had a 1% sales tax on top of that, making it 8.25% for a long time. This was what I was used to.

April 2009, the state raised the state sales tax by 1% to deal with the economic problems our state has. Thus the state tax became 8.25% and Los Angeles county 9.25%. This increase is expected to last until 2012. This is just the beginning. I live in El Monte, which is a city within Los Angeles county, and they passed their own sales tax increase to deal with their own budget deficit problems. This added .5% on top of it all taking it to 9.75%.

But wait there’s more. Voters in Los Angeles county agreed to a transportation and traffic relief improvement measure that would increase sales tax by another .5%. This went into effect July 1. This increase will last a whopping 30 years for all the huge projects. So to sum it all up: California 8.25%, Los Angeles County 9.75%, El Monte 10.25%.

My solution: pay for Amazon Prime ($79 annually for free 2 day shipping) and buy whatever I can from Amazon. I’ve bought quite a few things already and I think what I saved on tax already paid for the Prime. I know this is the exact opposite of what California needs, but they should know that raising taxes is not the solution here.