North Carolina suffers from a lack of affordable housing options for low and moderate income households.  And as my colleague Tyler Mulligan has noted, the public sector cannot be expected to solve this problem without private sector capital and expertise. … Read more

A North Carolina county purchases office furniture from a local office supply store for its newly arrived manager.  A construction contractor for a North Carolina city buys drywall from a hardware store to repair a water-damaged wall in a city … Read more

Data from the last ten years of county and municipal elections in North Carolina reveals that voters rarely reject proposals to issue general obligation (“GO”) bonds at the ballot box.  From November 2012 through and including November 2022, North Carolina … Read more

North Carolina’s local governments have been inundated with federal funds since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.  But the complexity and quantity of the rules applicable to the expenditure of those monies have not decreased since the … Read more

Unlike the vast majority of states, North Carolina does not excuse a local government from paying sales or use taxes incident to its purchases solely because it is a governmental entity.  Instead, unless state law exempts a particular type of … Read more

Find the last receipt you received when ordering food or drinks from a North Carolina restaurant.  How much tax did you pay?  What types of taxes did you pay? Even if the receipt did not break out each type of … Read more

My colleague Chris McLaughlin correctly noted in 2019 that “[s]ales taxes are, for the most part, a state government issue.”  The North Carolina Department of Revenue (“NCDOR”)—not North Carolina’s local governments—administers and collects sales and use taxes.  The North Carolina … Read more

Since 2005, the Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act (“LGBFCA”) has required finance officers of units of local government and public authorities in North Carolina to provide to their respective entities a “faithful performance bond with sufficient sureties in … Read more

UPDATE (3/3/23):  The North Carolina Supreme Court denied the Town of Boone’s Petition for Discretionary Review, filed on December 20, 2022. In an unpublished decision released on November 15 (Town of Boone v. Watauga County, 2022-NCCOA-778 (Nov. 15, 2022)), the … Read more

Sales tax rates are not uniform across North Carolina’s 100 counties.  In some counties, the combined rate of sales tax is as high as 7.5%, while in others that rate is as low as 6.75%.  Why?  “Local option” sales taxes. … Read more