Policy Demands, Fiscal Needs, and Tax Choices by Local Governments: The Case of Florida County Discretionary Surtax

Today, sales tax becomes one of important fiscal tools to local governments that should seek new tax base under fiscal constraints to meet new demand for the public goods. This study examines the adoption of special purpose option sales tax for regional development (called Local Discretionary Sales Tax (LDST)). Based on the description of LDST and the previous literatures, several factors are selected for Panel Data Analysis of LDST adoption. The result of analysis confirms the influence of diffusion factor and political ideology on the local tax adoption that the precedent literatures found at state level but was debatable at local level. The most striking result is, however, that the county did not adopt local option sales tax to enhance the fiscal condition. This implies that the introduction of the discretionary local tax should be followed by the step for the distribution of LDST revenue to mitigate the fiscal disparity.