The Georgia cities of College Park, East Point, and Hapeville have elected to impose an optional 1% sales tax at the municipal level, following referendums in May 2022. The cities held referendums in response to House Bill 160, passed by the Georgia General Assembly in the 2021-2022 legislative session, that authorized municipalities interconnected to a large wastewater system to impose an additional sales tax.
Prior to this bill’s enactment, only one city in Georgia, the city of Atlanta, imposed any kind of city level sales tax under a condition that required a city to have a waste-water flow of more than 85 million gallons per day. The Atlanta sales tax is specifically allocated to improve the city’s sewer and water systems, and the three cities that have chosen to enact the new optional local tax are located adjacent to the city of Atlanta and qualify due to their interconnections. The three cities also all are located immediately adjacent to the Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, consistently ranked the busiest airport in the world.
Though Georgia primarily imposes sales taxes at the county level, keeping up with sales tax rates increases in complexity when additional jurisdictions are authorized to begin collecting their own tax. The new taxes will go into effect on October 1, 2022.
Georgia Department of Revenue, Policy Bulletin SUT-2022-01