County staff outlines how Senate Bill 96 would let Brookings County use sales tax to cut county property levies

Finance Officer Jen Beller told the Brookings County Commission that Senate Bill 96 would allow the county to impose a sales tax of up to 0.5 percentage points and place receipts into a special revenue fund to offset county owner‑occupied property taxes. "So the rate would be 0.25 penny versus the state's 4.2%," Beller said while walking the commission through state estimates and examples of homeowner impacts.

Beller said the Department of Revenue estimated Brookings County could collect about $6,474,420 annually under the law and that, after an estimated $20,000 in implementation costs, roughly $6.38 million could be available to credit owner‑occupied county taxes. She noted the county may use a portion of the fund to cover system programming and accounting costs—"we're allowed to do 2% of all of the deposits the 1st year," she said—and that special revenue monies must be used to keep TIF districts whole so municipal debt-service and incentive agreements are not shorted.

Beller presented three parcel examples to show the effect on typical county tax bills: in one example a county portion that started at $5,003.63 would fall under the scenario presented, with homeowners seeing county‑portion credits but still paying higher sales tax on purchases. She cautioned the numbers are estimates: "these are all estimates because we don't know what we would get," she said. The commission asked staff for more historical year‑by‑year sales‑tax data and implementation clarifications before taking further steps.