If Ventura Won’t Pay Sales Tax, Why Should I?

Dear Ventura County Supervisors:

We’ve been friends for some time so I feel I can level with you about a certain little problem I’ve been having.

The fact is, I keep running short of cash. No, no--please: Put your checkbooks away. I’m only letting you know about my embarrassing financial situation because I’ve decided--gee, I don’t know how to say this, guys--but I’ve decided not to pay your miserable sales tax this year, or ever again.

This hasn’t been an easy decision.

In fact, it never would have occurred to me if the city of Ventura--my town, I proudly add--hadn’t bowed out of the rendering-to-Caesar business just last week.

I figure if Ventura can save nearly $600,000 by collecting sales taxes and not giving the county its usual share, then a sales-tax pipsqueak like Steven B. Chawkins can save a little something too.

I tried it just today, but it didn’t go so well.

Hauling a 10-pound sack of cat food to the cash register at a large discount store, I handed the clerk a check for $19.99 and a special card that I had printed up:

“Please excuse Steven B. Chawkins from paying (fill in the blank) in sales taxes. He promises he won’t use the money he saves for anything stupid.”

The clerk didn’t think much of it.

“You owe me another $1.45,” she said. “Sales tax.”

“Says who? If Ventura can keep the sales taxes that it usually gives the county, then so can I. Ojai has done it for something like 30 years, but the county either didn’t know or care; talk about good karma!”

The clerk was confused.

“They don’t put you in jail for not paying your taxes?”

“Jail? Don’t you know the first thing about the law? Cities agree to share sales taxes with the county, kind of like you and I giving to the United Way. Any time they feel like it, they can pull the plug--it’s perfectly kosher, at least according to Ventura.”

“And you’re allowed to act like a city?”

“You’d rather I acted like my cousin Moe?”

I left as the manager called the police. He apparently wasn’t up on the finer points of the municipal tax code.

Despite this fiasco, I’m confident that my revenue-shifting plan eventually will work at least as well as Ventura’s.

This will no doubt cause you at the county some inconvenience, and I’m sorry for it. I know you depend on my nickels and dimes to run the jails, operate the clinics, issue the crop reports, hire the consultants, thumb through the studies, and pay the humongous federal fines. And I hope you trust me when I tell you that if I had any loose cash kicking around, the county of Ventura would be absolutely top of the list.

But I’m no dot-com gazillionaire, and neither is the city of Ventura.

Ventura needs the cash it would otherwise give the county to repair its crumbling streets. I need the cash I would otherwise give the county to buy gas, so I can drive on Ventura’s crumbling streets. I’m sure you understand, don’t you?

Now I know you’ll have all kinds of arguments against little guys like me deciding to hold back their sales taxes.

You’ll claim that cities can squeeze through loopholes that are unavailable to mere individuals. You’ll also point out that if Ventura doesn’t retreat, you can choke off the sales tax that allows most of the county’s cities to sit up and take solid food.

Maybe you’ll even tell me that the cities and the county are stuck in a rotten system, and should work together to keep the state from gobbling down so much of the money they need to keep the parks open and make sure the buses run on time.

And maybe all that is true.

But for now, I’ll keep fighting my brave little sales-tax fight and rely on the three little words they’re using around Ventura’s City Hall:

So sue me.

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Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.