Your taxes are going up… AGAIN!?

Taxation without representation didn’t die in 1773—it’s alive and well in Louisiana. Lawmakers are using backdoor tactics to expand local taxes without voter approval, and cities like Youngsville are quietly playing along. The price? Your constitutional rights.

Most of us are familiar with the Boston Tea Party and the rally of “no taxation without representation.” What type of tax burden were the colonists facing with the passage of the Tea Act in 1773? In order to pay $1 in taxes on tea, someone in the colonies would have had to consume a gallon of tea per day for the entire year. This equates to roughly $367, or one dollar per day in today’s money.

Speaking of a possible break of the colonies from Great Britain, Mather Byles warned:

“Which is better – to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or three thousand tyrants one mile away?”

It wasn’t the price of tea that stirred rebellion—it was the precedent. If government could tax without consent once, it could do it again. After all, if we allow them to tax us in this instance without authority, it will just continue.

Benjamin Rush remarked: “The baneful chests contain in them a slow poison in a political as well as a physical sense. They contain something worse than death – the seeds of slavery.”

J.L. Bell recounts the plight of the colonist:

The Stamp Act protests worked; Parliament repealed that law in 1776 before it could be put into practice. Then in 1767, London instituted the Townshend duties. Once again, the colonies responded with nonimportation, and those taxes were repealed in 1770 – except for the one on tea. Thus, by 1773, a wide swath of Americans were steeped in the beliefs that any tax levied by Parliament without local approval was despotic, and that the Tea Act was just the latest step in an attempt to oppress them.”

Sound familiar? It should. Louisiana’s Legislature has found a modern-day workaround for taxing you without asking—one that echoes every warning from our nation’s earliest patriots. John Dickinson recognized the threat early on when the Townshend duties were implemented in 1767. He left us with these words of caution, which still serve as a warning today.

“The authors of this law would never have obtained an act to raise so trifling a sum as it must do, had they not intended by it to establish a precedent for future use.”

We were warned!

Thanks to the Legislature, this is precisely what’s happening across the state, including your local community. We’ll use Youngsville as an example for this article. However, you need to check your local community because this is happening there, too.

If you follow the national mainstream media outlets, you are force-fed propaganda, multiple spoons at a time. Much like if you subscribe to the social media channels for the City of Youngsville and most municipalities, you constantly get a steady dose of positive reports. Don’t conflate feel-good social media posts with real progress—your tax dollars fund outside consultants like Eddie Lau to paint a puffy, false narrative. Rest assured, it is not all rainbows and unicorns. Rising taxes, rising crime, and rising flood waters are just a few things that come to mind.

Here is what you should know.

Raising Taxes

Youngsville spends a lot of money. The adopted budget for the fiscal year of 2024-2025, which is winding down, estimated total revenues at $50,031,274, while the City was prepared to spend $69,027,582 during the same cycle. One report, in 2022, placed the city’s outstanding debt at $41,481,595, twice as high as neighboring Broussard’s.

The City presently collects ad valorem (property taxes) at 7.000 mills for general alimony, 6.000 mills for fire protection and waterworks, and an additional 1.860 mills for fire protection. Additionally, the City collects multiple sales and use taxes, including the 1968 1% sales tax, the 1981 1% sales tax, the 1999 ½% sales tax, and the 2011 1% sales tax, the latter of which is collected exclusively to fund the various ‘recreational facilities.’

The Council has now unanimously voted to introduce an ordinance that would further increase the tax burden on residents, very quietly, without a vote of the people. Don’t expect to see that post on the City’s Facebook feed.

Back to the Basics

It is always important to return to the basics when evaluating these things. As mentioned earlier, the City of Youngsville levies four separate sales and use taxes, which the Lafayette Parish School System collects. All four sales and taxes (1968, 1981, 1999, and 2011) are voter-approved propositions as our state constitution requires.

Article 6, Section 29 of the Louisiana Constitution authorizes local government subdivisions and school boards to levy and collect taxes. The pertinent language is as follows:

“…the governing authority of any local governmental subdivision or school board may levy and collect a tax upon the sale at retail, the use, the lease or rental, the consumption, and the storage for use or consumption, of tangible personal property and on sales of services as defined by law, if approved by a majority of the electors voting thereon in an election held for that purpose.”

Our Louisiana Legislature increased taxes last year and attempted to rewrite a large portion of our Constitution, specifically dealing with revenue and finance. The voters soundly rejected the changes at the polls, but some legislation from the 3rd Extraordinary Session did get through. The items pertinent to this topic are Act 10, which originated from Representative Ken Brass (D 2/10) and Senator Sam Jenkins (D 1/10), HB08 providing for a tax on digital products. Then there was Act 11, which originated from Representative Mark Wright’s (R 6/10) HB10, which provided 162 pages of changes related to the state sales and use tax, income tax, and many exemptions, exclusions, credits, and rebates. You know… the usual carveouts for the well-connected.

You shall be taxed!

Through Act 10, the Louisiana Legislature decided you SHALL be taxed. The Uniform Local Sales Tax Code under Louisiana Revised Statute 47:337.3 provides:

“A taxing authority may continue to levy sales and use taxes under the authority provided for political subdivisions by the statutes or Constitution of Louisiana.”

But Act 10 added additional language, which reads:

“A taxing authority shall levy sales and use taxes on the sales at retail, the use, the lease or rental, the consumption, and the storage of digital products.”

What exactly constitutes the “storage of digital products” is unclear. Louisiana Revised Statute 47:301 defines the terms “digital product” and “storage”.

A “digital product” includes digital audio visual works, digital audio works, digital books, digital codes, digital applications and games, digital periodicals and discussion forums, and any other otherwise taxable tangible personal property transferred electronically, whether digitally delivered, streamed, or accessed and whether purchased singly, by subscription, or in any other manner, including maintenance, updates, and support.

“Storage” means “any keeping or retention in the taxing jurisdiction of tangible personal property or digital products for use or consumption within the taxing jurisdiction or for any purpose other than for sale at retail in the regular course of business.”

Regardless of what you think the “storage of digital products” means, bureaucratic tax collectors WILL NOT interpret it in a manner favorable to you. Additionally, the state is MANDATING that taxes are levied on digital products. The Lafayette Parish School System Sales Tax Division sent letters to municipal entities in January this year, encouraging them to “formally revise and restate their ordinance” related to sales tax collection to “conform to statutory changes,” including the collection on digital goods. Local officials may not even realize they’re being used to rubber-stamp an unconstitutional expansion of tax authority.

Houston… We have a Problem

The Legislature can’t use a statute to rewrite the outcome of a voter-approved tax election. The people of Youngsville decided in 1968, 1981, 1999, and 2011 that they would subject themselves to a sales and use tax specifically for the purpose outlined in the tax proposition and according to the terms therein when they were adopted. The Lafayette Parish School System Sales Tax Division would now have you believe that the state law changes require you to begin collecting the sales and use tax, which were previously voted on by the people, on additional items that the VOTERS DID NOT APPROVE.

If the Legislature can do so, why didn’t they adopt a law requiring the change? Because they don’t oversee the adoption of local ordinances. That is why they are trying to influence your elected local council members to change the sales and use tax collection ordinance. Likewise, the legislature doesn’t have the authority to circumvent a constitutionally enacted tax proposition put before a vote of the people.

The part that didn’t pass

What the Legislature did try to do when they passed the other “big, beautiful bill”, you know the one that failed to get a favorable vote of the people in January, was to include some slippery language for changing previously adopted tax propositions. Act 1, which resulted from a 115-page bill (HB7) by Representative Julie Emerson (R 9/10), would have included the following constitutional language if the people had adopted it:

“Notwithstanding the provisions of Article VI, Section 29 of this constitution, the sales and use tax levied by a political subdivision shall apply to any sale at retail, use, lease, rental, consumption, or storage of goods, services, and other products as authorized by or required by law.

Notwithstanding any other provision of this constitution to the contrary, all local taxing authorities are hereby authorized to amend their ordinances concerning sales and use taxes to conform any existing levy to the authority granted to those taxing authorities pursuant to applicable law.”

That language would have allowed any local governmental subdivision or school board to modify a pre-existing ordinance for the levy and collection of a tax previously adopted by the people during an election to be changed to tax whatever the legislature chooses to tax. That is dangerous!

Ballot Language Matters!

When voters go to the polls to vote on tax propositions and constitutional amendments, ballot language matters. A summary only a few sentences in length didn’t pass the smell test for a bill that was over a hundred pages long. That is one reason voters rejected the sweeping changes contained in Act 1 earlier this year.

To further illustrate our point, let’s look at some of the language that has been previously approved by the voters of Youngsville.

The 1968 ballot proposition language reads:

“Shall the Village of Youngsville, State of Louisiana, be authorized to levy and collect a tax of one percent (1%) upon the sales at retail, the use, the lease or rental, the consumption and storage for use or consumption of tangible personal property and on sales and services in said Village, as defined in R.S. 47:301 to 47:317, inclusive….”

No additional provision, such as “as amended from time to time,” provides or accounts for future changes in the law. The language as it existed in 1968, when the people voted on it, remains the only constitutionally valid application.

The 1981 ballot proposition language is even more explicit. It reads:

“Shall the Village of Youngsville, State of Louisiana (the “Village”), under the provisions of Article VI, Section 29(A) of Constitution of the State of Louisiana of 1974 and other constitutional and statutory authority supplemental thereto, be authorized to levy and collect, and adopt an ordinance providing for such levy and collection, a tax of one percent (1%) (the “Tax”) upon the sales at retail, the use, the lease or rental, the consumption, and storage for use or consumption of tangible personal property and on sales and services in the Village, all as presently defined in La. R.S. 47:301 through La. R.S. 47:317, inclusive….”

What can you do? Start by asking your local officials one question: Are we collecting taxes that voters never approved? Then make some noise—because this scheme only works if you stay quiet.

###