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Show Control of Public Expenditures Article 2 What the Tax Money Is Spent For. j; The difficulties which beset the taxpayer in his attempts to control the amount of tax money to be collected col-lected in his community were discussed discuss-ed in our last article, and wo indicated indi-cated that through a proper understanding under-standing of the procedure, the taxpayers tax-payers of any community could assist as-sist in determining in advance what the public expenditures for any local purpose should be. The tax notice which each taxpayer taxpay-er receives does not show the action of any one tax spending body but is the combined result of the levies of each branch of government under which the property of the taxpayer is subject to taxation. Thus if the property pro-perty is located in a city it is subject sub-ject to taxation for state, county, school district and city purposes. We shall examine the situation in Mant; for the year 1931, to illustrate how the tax bill is formulated and to show the proportion of the total tax which is levied for each purpose. In order that the various purposes can be grouped under the heads with which each is familiar, we shall use the following distribution:, state general gen-eral fund, county, roads, schools, and finally city purposes. We find that each dollar which is paid in taxes on Manti property is distributed as fol-1 lows: State General Fund $ .06 Dist. and High Schools 41 County purposes .. .11 Roads .10 City purposes.... .32 Total ....$1.00 The above proportions are not uniform uni-form throughout the state but vary in accordance with the levies in different dif-ferent localities. We shall now briefly analyze each of the above purposes. The state general gen-eral fund levy is applied upon the valuation of all property through-1 out the entire state. The revenue ! from this source is used for the oper- j ation of the state government. This includes the University of Utah, the Utah State Agricultural college, the Branch Agricultural college at Cedar City, the state prison, the school for the deaf and blind and various other state institutions. The levy for district and high schools includes the state levy for these purposes as well as the local levies. In 1930 the state levied a tax of 4.7 mills for state district school purposes and .2 of a mill for state (Continued on last page) 'What Tax Money Is Spent For j (Continued from page 1) high school purposes. The revenue ! which is secured from these levies is distributed back to the various school I districts. The state district school i lt-vy is distributed on a basis of approximately ap-proximately $25.00 per capita school population, while- the state high school k-vy is paid back to the school districts on a basis of the attendance in the high schools. For the school year 190-31, $24.14 per capita was distributed for the district school fund and $4.58 per capita for the high school fund. Under this arrangement ar-rangement a county which is above the average in per capita wealth con- ; tributes to the aid of the schools in a county which is under the average per capita wealth. Last year the total school tax charged in Sanpete county was $64,463.78, while the total amount of aid which the two school districts in Sanpete county received from, the state tax for district and high schools was $115,563.92, so that the North and South Sanpete school districts received re-ceived $51,100.14 more from the state school than was charged against Sanpete San-pete county property for this tax. This total does not include receipts from the state land interest and rental rent-al fund in the amount of $10,328.81. The levy for county purposes is made up from the following items: general fund, poor and indigent, de- pendent mothers, fairs and advertising, advertis-ing, interest and sinking fund, and old age pensions. The road levy consists con-sists of a 1.5 mill levy for county roads and a levy of 2.6 mills for the maintenance and repair of the state highway within Sanpete county. The municipal levy for Manti shows a total of 13 mills. This total is made up as follows:- general fund, 4.5 mills; water works, .5 mill; streets and sidewalks, 2.5 mills; town halls or memorials, 1.5 mills; library, 1.5 mill; interest and sinking fund, 2.5 mills. In the above we have very briefly analyzed the tax levied on property situated in Manti. This analysis shows the general purposes for which taxes are now being raised and provides a basis for the further study of the problem. The taxpayer is probably interested in the total amount of his tax bill more than in any one item, but the total bill is made up of many items each levied for different purposes. pur-poses. If taxes are to be reduced, the reduction must be applied directly to the individual items which make up the total. Our next article will explain how the various items which make up the total tax bill are determined and will point the way to the taxpayer who is interested in the effective control of public expenditures. |