Anchorage’s 3% Sales Tax: Savings or Shell Game?

A closer look at Anchorage’s proposed 3% sales tax — and the price of civic fairness.

Pillar II — Local Policy

Anchorage has debated a city sales tax for decades. Each time, the promise sounds familiar — lower property taxes, more “fairness,” less burden. And each time, the math hides more than it reveals.

A 3% sales tax may look harmless, but every percentage point shifts power. It changes who carries the weight of the city’s budget — from those with means to those without. The working family that buys groceries or gas will pay more of their income than the property developer or corporate landlord ever will.

Politicians sell the tax as relief, but it’s really redistribution — not from the rich to the poor, but from the visible to the invisible. It moves the cost of civic life off the tax bill and onto the receipt.

Anchorage doesn’t need more cleverness; it needs clarity. A sales tax should never be judged by the rate it claims, but by the fairness it keeps. If the goal is stability, then transparency — not technicality — is the answer.

The promise of lower property taxes is appealing, but the true measure of any policy is not what it promises, but whom it serves.

Democracy demands dialogue, not dominance.
Speak clearly. Listen deeply. Think freely.