With the close of business on Monday, August 31, 2009, one month under the most regressive major tax in Massachusetts will be in the books. I doubt the town is tracking the tax’s effect on business and unemployment specifically, but it would be helpful to gather and make public such data. We have the tools already available to us, it’s just a matter of getting the necessary data. The sort of data needed in it most primative form is fairly simple:

1. Since the sales tax hike was implemented, have you seen a reduction in sales when compared with the same month over previous years?

2. Since the sales tax hike, have your margins become thin enough to warrant layoffs directly attributable to the tax alone?

3. Have you increased the hotel tax to allowable limits (2% + the 1.75% ST)?

• a. If so, has it hurt or helped your bottom line?
  
  
• b. Has it impacted your ability to keep or hire new employees positively or negatively?

4. Have you increased the meals tax to allowable limits (0.75% + the 1.5% ST)?

• a. If so, has that helped or hurt your bottom line?
  
  
• b. Has it impacted your ability to keep or hire new employees positively or negatively?

5. If you are a package store, has the increased tax on liquor caused a drop in business?

6. If you are a low income family, have you tried to concentrate your shopping to less frequent trips across the border?

7. If you are an average income or above family, have you made more purchases across the border due to the sales tax, particularly on high cost items?

8. As a consumer, which is more important to you:

• Trying to support your favorite local business?
  
  
• Trying to save as much money as possible and avoiding a tax that really hurts?
  
  

I have little doubt that these sort of statistics will become available for the Merrimack Valley; however, locally, it would be helpful if merchants and citizens had access to an anonymous form (business identification optional) on the town’t website for officials and citizens alike to review. We may not be able to do a thing about the sales tax as a town, but information is valuable and familiarity with such data may, in fact, help guide the town in seeking a direction for growth.

At any rate, it would be interesting to see how the real data stacks up against that predicted by the prognosticators.