State Tax Tokens

[raw-war-digger]

Thought I'd show some of the State Tax Tokens I've found (Alabama, Louisiana and two different Mississippi). The ground really eats the older aluminum around these parts! The Alabama token was folded over but I managed to get it flat.

Thanks For Looking,
Happy Hunting/Collecting, RAW

[NB Digger]

Very interesting Roger. That is the first time I have ever seen a tax token. What is the date or age of them? Happy Hunting.
Travis

[raw-war-digger]

But I think I read where they were discontinued in the 50's or 60's. I found this site the other night: http://home.psknet.com/tbirde3/Medals/Medals.html
While looking through it I reconized a few other tokens I've found. I've emailed this guy with some scans and questions without a reply.

Let it be known by posting the above website, I am Not trying to take anything away from John in ID (Idahotokens) ability nor knowledge!!!
Just thought I'd share.

HH, Roger

[rustycoinUT]

Sales tax tokens were made in great quantities starting in 1935 in order to give change for sales taxes. Sales tax resulted in the final price of items having fractions of a cent. For example, purchase of a $1.25 item, taxed at 3%, would cost $1.2875, or $1.28 and 3/4c. What to do? Rounding up to $1.29 would result in a "unfair" profit to the seller of 1/4c, but rounding down would be unfair to the seller by reducing the profit by 3/4c. The solution was to provide tokens denominated in fractions of a cent, or "mills" (1 mill = 1/1000 of a dollar, or 1/10 of a cent). So in the above example, the customer would pay $1.29 and receive 2.5 mills in tax tokens as change. If the next purchase came to $3.4325, the customer could pay $3.43 plus the 2.5 mills in tax tokens. As you can imagine, people did not like having to carry a second set of coins, and to further complicate matters, different states issued different tax tokens. The use of tax tokens declined and was finally discontinued in 1961, and people basically decided not to worry about fractions of a cent.
"Coinlike" tax tokens were issued by twelve different states (Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Washington state). Tokens were made of aluminum, copper, zinc, brass, plastic (in several colors), fiber, cardboard, and paper. 1 and 5 mills are the most common denominations, but other denominations include: 1/5 cent, 1 1/2 mills, and "Tax on 10c or less." Many tax tokens are quite common, and can often be found in dealer "junk boxes" for as little as 10c. Others are scarcer, though due to low demand, they also show up in junk boxes from time to time. A few, such as the New Mexico 5 mill black fiber are truly rare, and worth up to $100 or so. Some "Provisional Issues" were made, which list the city as well as the state. These are much scarcer than the state issues, but prices are still fairly low, the ones I've seen have been in the one-to-several-dollars range. Tax token "tickets" printed on paper were also issued by several states (including ones not listed above). I have not seen enough of these to get an idea as to value. It is easy to believe that many fewer paper items have survived than the metal and plastic tokens, but demand is probably not great enough to generate high prices for most items.

A related issue are the small vulcanized fiber "red point" and "blue point" tokens, which are ration tokens issued by the USA during WW II to make change for ration coupons. These were also issued in large numbers (1.1 billion red, 0.9 billion blue) and are quite common. The red is a bit more common than the blue, but both are readily available. Each token has two letter on it, and some people collect them by letter combination. Most of the letter combinations are quite common, but the red "MM" is a bit scarce, and the red "MV" is quite rare, and has sold on eBay for about $100.


Happy Holidays
rustycoinUT