The School Infrastructure Local Option (SILO) is a 1% local option

sales tax A sales tax is a tax paid to a governing body for the sales of certain goods and services. Usually laws allow the seller to collect funds for the tax from the consumer at the point of purchase. When a tax on goods or services is paid to a govern ...

adopted on a county by county basis in

Iowa Iowa ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the upper Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west; Wisconsin to the northeast, Ill ...

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. Although the tax is collected by county, state mandate says the total amount collected is to be pooled and shared between the school districts. SILO was developed in 1998 by the Iowa General Assembly to give school districts a revenue options other than the

property tax A property tax (whose rate is expressed as a percentage or per mille, also called ''millage'') is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or Wealth t ...

. The tax can be enacted for up to 10 years at a time. As of late 2005, only Linn and

Johnson Johnson may refer to: People and fictional characters *Johnson (surname), a common surname in English * Johnson (given name), a list of people * List of people with surname Johnson, including fictional characters *Johnson (composer) (1953–2011) ...

counties in Iowa had not enacted a SILO tax. In the spring of 2006 the Iowa legislature encouraged the two remaining counties to join the other 97 counties which had enacted this tax by offering an incentive provided the tax was enacted by July 1, 2008, allowing the districts to keep 100% of the money generated for the first half of the time it is collected instead of pooling it statewide. A vote was scheduled in both counties for February 13, 2007 where it was approved, 58% to 42% in Linn County and 67% to 33% in Johnson County. The tax for both counties went into effect on July 1, 2007 for a period of 10 years, making it a statewide tax. Iowa currently has a 6% state sales tax rate in addition to the 1% SILO tax and any other Local Option Sales Taxes (LOST) which may be in effect in each county, often an additional 1%.

References

{{reflist Taxation in the United States Education in Iowa