A Quarter-Cent Deserves a Fair Look

A proposed sales tax would add 25 cents per $100 spent in Moore County. Here’s why visitor spending matters.

#Opinion • 10:32 p.m. Aug. 11, 2026

There are some things that sound bigger from across the room than they do once you pull up a chair and look at them. A quarter-cent sales tax is one of them.

Say “tax increase,” and folks understandably stiffen up. Nobody is looking for another hand in his pocket, and government ought to remember that before asking for another dime. But this one deserves a practical look, not a political one.

Start with the math

Spend $100 in Moore County, and the proposed increase adds 25 cents. A $35 purchase adds about 9 cents. Spend $200, and it adds 50 cents. On $500, it is $1.25.

Those numbers matter because Moore County is not Shelbyville, Tullahoma, or Fayetteville. We do not have rows of big-box stores stretching down a four-lane. We do not have an auto dealership or a farm implement dealership. A whole lot of what Moore County residents buy gets bought somewhere else.

We make the run to Tullahoma. We head to Shelbyville. We shop in Fayetteville, Winchester, and Decherd. When we do, the local share of that sales tax goes there instead of here.

Then follow the money

But Moore County has something most small counties would dearly love to have: people come to us. A lot of them. They walk through Lynchburg with money in their pockets and spend it at places such as 203 Main, Baker’s Antiques, Dollar General, Lodge Factory Store, and Lynchburg Soap Co.

They eat. They shop. They carry home cast iron, antiques, soap, souvenirs, and something with Lynchburg stamped across it. Every time a register rings on a taxable purchase, Moore County gets a share.

That is the part of this discussion we ought not skip. The Jack Daniel Distillery draws about 300,000 visitors a year, and the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development reported $15.59 million in visitor spending in Moore County in 2024. That is real money, and it did not all come from Moore County wallets.

Visitors change the equation

Many of us already shop in places where the combined sales tax is as high as, or higher than, what is being proposed here. Shelbyville and Tullahoma are already at 9.75%. Moore County is at 9.5%.

So if I drive to Tullahoma and spend $100, I am already paying that extra quarter. If I spend that same $100 in Lynchburg, the extra quarter helps Moore County instead.

Now, none of that means 25 cents is meaningless. Pennies still matter, especially when you are counting every dollar. But there is another side worth looking at, too: this is not a tax paid only by the people who sleep in Moore County every night.

Visitors would pay it, too, and Lynchburg already has a steady stream of them walking past our storefronts. That makes visitor spending a bigger part of this conversation than it would be in most rural counties.

The dollars that leave with them

There is an even larger opportunity sitting just beyond the Square: lodging. We draw hundreds of thousands of people, yet many leave Moore County when the day is done. They sleep somewhere else, eat there, buy gas there, and take those dollars with them.

The quarter-cent question and the lodging question are not the same thing, but they meet at the same place: How much of the money already flowing through Lynchburg are we keeping in Moore County?

Why ask again?

This proposal has been rejected twice. That matters. Voters spoke clearly both times, and those votes should not be brushed aside simply because the question may come back again.

But hearing “sales tax” for a third time should not end the conversation before it starts. If Metro Council puts the question before voters again, the decision belongs to them. Before anybody marks a ballot, though, it is worth looking past the word tax, looking at what actually happens at the register, and asking one more practical question:

Whose quarter is it?