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Committee backs putting 1% earnings-tax renewal before St. Louis City voters
Summary
The Budget and Public Employees Committee voted a do-pass recommendation on Board Bill 100 to put a five-year renewal of St. Louis City—s 1% earnings tax before voters, after a presentation by the budget director that the tax supplies roughly 38% of general fund revenue and underpins many city services.
ST. LOUIS — The St. Louis City Budget and Public Employees Committee on Nov. 19 voted to advance Board Bill 100, a proposal to put before voters a five-year renewal of the city—s 1% earnings tax.
Aldewoman Jamie Cox Antuit, sponsor of Board Bill 100, told the committee the measure would submit the question of renewing the earnings tax to voters under the state—s five-year renewal requirement. "A 1% earnings tax is better than a 50% increase in your property taxes," Cox Antuit said in closing remarks.
Budget Director Paul Paine led a presentation that framed the earnings tax as the single largest source of general-fund revenue for the city. Paine said the city—s general-fund budget in the year cited totaled roughly $607.4 million and that the earnings tax represents about 38% of general-fund revenue. He illustrated the scale by noting the earnings-tax receipts exceed the listed FY26 general-fund cost for the Police Department in Paine—s slides.
Paine also walked the committee through illustrations showing how difficult it would be to replace earnings-tax revenue with other sources. In one illustrative example he said replacing the earnings tax with property-tax revenue at current valuations would require a levy increase that he characterized as the equivalent of a roughly 52.9% increase in basic homeowner tax burden in the example; Paine cautioned that such an increase would exceed statutory levy limits and impose a sizable new burden on property owners.
Committee members asked for plain-language context about the risks. Vice Chair Browning said the tax—s importance was hard to overstate and asked what is at risk if the tax were not renewed; Paine replied that core services such as fire, parks, streets, corrections and other city operations that rely on the general fund would be at risk without a dedicated replacement source. He also warned that TIF and other debt-service arrangements that assume earnings-tax revenue could be disrupted if the revenue source changed.
Several committee members requested to be added as cosponsors during the meeting. With no in-person or written public testimony submitted, the committee voted to "bank" Board Bill 100 and then moved to a roll for a do-pass recommendation. The committee reported passage of the do-pass recommendation with no objections recorded at the meeting.
Cox Antuit told the committee she hoped that advancing the bill would allow the city to explain to voters why the renewal matters before the next scheduled renewal in April 2026. Following the committee—s action, Board Bill 100 will be carried forward for the next steps in the legislative process.
(Reporting by meeting transcript; quoted speakers identified in text.)
