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North Virginia Sales Tax Referendum Everyone pays taxes. No matter who you are and where you are from, every person that is a citizen of the United States must pay taxes. With that responsibility comes the expectation of tax increases every so often. This is not to say that all tax hikes are justified or useful, because surely there have been tax increases that really have not met their intended purposes. In January of 2002, the North Virginia Alliance Report recommended that the state should “Enact a 1% regional sales or income tax dedicated to specific transportation improvements.” Furthermore, they recommended that the state should “Enact legislation requiring the referendum ballot to list projects to which funds will be dedicated, but postpone project selection until after the session when adequate performance-based analysis can be performed.” Both of these recommendations were very serious, and could potentially have been very costly to the residents of north Virginia. The proposal formally was changed to increase the retail sales tax by one-half of one percent from 4.5% to 5%, an 11% increase, in Northern Virginia four counties and five cities: Loudoun County, Fairfax County, Arlington County, Prince Will