New Florence residents will vote on whether a local use tax should be at the same rate as the total local sales tax rate in the April 8 general election.

The measure is called Proposition U. This is the first time the City of New Florence has placed a use tax measure on the ballot.

“If you go into a store and you buy something, you get charged sales tax,” City Administrator David Ingle said. “So if you go on the internet, they usually put the word tax. But actually from my understanding, it comes off the use tax from the state of Missouri. Montgomery County already has got this implemented in the state of Missouri. Of course, it has been implemented in several other municipalities. Montgomery City and so forth have already passed that. For whatever reason, it never got put in our ballot for our citizens to consider.”

Ingle said the Board of Aldermen – which includes Mayor Beth Nelson, Deby Juntunen, Jason Carter, Michelle Fortmann and Glenn Bartlett – started discussing the use tax measure several months ago.

“There were some questions about it, but the end result was it’s an opportunity for the city to have a revenue funding source,” Ingle said.

City residents are invited to a public hearing at 6 p.m. on March 25 to find out information about the use tax, which is a local tax that is applied to goods that are purchased from out-of-state sources, such as online transactions, that are delivered to and utilized within the City of New Florence. When Missouri residents make online purchases, they pay no sales tax to the city they live in, but they pay sales tax to the state. In a use tax, local and out-of-state businesses collect the same tax rate.

“The big thing about this proposition is that there is nothing added to the taxable sales tax rates concerning the city,” Ingle said. “If you buy something over the Internet, you don’t necessarily get charged a sales tax on that. You get charged a use tax on that, so you can’t be charged a sales tax and a use tax. It’s either one or the other.”

Three years ago, Montgomery City voters approved a use tax. The city received between $30,000 to $50,000 in annual revenue.

More than 305 cities in the state have a use tax. There are over 1,200 cities in the state. The city of Hallsville, which is located an hour west of New Florence, is also placing a use tax measure on the ballot for the April election.

Montgomery County passed this issue in 2021 and collected over $300,000.