Lindsey Ziliak, writing for the Evansville Courier Press has an article entitled “State sales tax going up next week.” The sales tax is increasing from 6 cents per dollar to 7 cents per dollar. She denominates this as a “1% increase.” If there are any statisticians out there, I’d like to know if the size of the sales tax increase is more properly designated as a 16% increase. The size of the tax will be 1/6th larger than it was previously, hence, an increase of 16.66%.
I think you would say, “The tax rate went up one percentage point, a 16% increase over the previous rate.” Or something like that.
16.66%? I knew more sales taxes were the devil’s work…
Yes, it could be factually stated “Sales taxes have increased by over 16%”
Since what you fork over for a one dollar taxable item goes from $1.06 to $1.07, you could say the effective cost of such goods has gone up slightly LESS than one percent…
(.9434%, if you don’t want to open up Calculator)
The increase in the sales tax rate is 16+ percent.
It’s also an increase of one percentage point.
Both are correct, but it’s not a 1% increase as the Evansville paper reported. Most journalists are notoriously bad at math.