5% Sales Tax Not "Dunbar Tax" and Benefits More Than the Homeless

A picture taken inside a downtown bar & restaurant is catching flack from some local social media users. The image, posted to the Save Anchorage group by one of their moderators, seems to infer that the 5% tax on alcohol is a "Dunbar Tax."

A disturbing meme posted in response to the picture seems to refer to the city's homeless population as "parasites."

Alaska Proposition 13, the alcohol sales tax charter amendment referred to in the picture, was on the ballot in Anchorage on April 7, 2020. Anchorage residents approved Proposition 13 by 51.24% - 48.76%.

The proposition isn't just a sales tax benefitting the (homeless) as the sign claims, however, as Proposition 13 levies a 5 percent tax that dedicates revenue from the tax toward:

"(a) police, first responders, and criminal justice personnel, (b) addressing child abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence, and (c) programs related to substance misuse treatment and prevention, mental and behavioral health, and homelessness."

Social media comments on Reddit were mainly unsympathetic to a cropped version of the same picture, with one user commenting:

"The alcohol tax is 5% of retail sales, which, unless my math is wrong means they sold around 74k worth of alcohol that month? Cry me a fucking river."

Another Reddit user wrote, "5%! So you mean my 7$ beer from the tap is going to cost an extra...... 35 cents!!! What an outrage." Reddit user GiantFinnegan wrote that their "places to avoid have grown so much over the last year."

Other commenters said that taxes should further be increased on cigarettes; others complained that churches don't get taxed but can receive federal bailouts from the government, as Anchorage Baptist Temple reportedly did last year.

One Reddit user attempted to blame Mr. Dunbar for the tax and was met with some serious social media savagery.

As we head into the home stretch of the Anchorage mayoral race, one could almost certainly expect to see more posts like this one in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, rest well knowing the 5% sales tax on alcohol benefits Anchorage's most vulnerable and the programs that aim to aid them.