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Emergency Sales Tax Token Colfax, Wash.
| Issuer | Colfax Retail Trade Bureau |
|---|---|
| Year | |
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| Size | 45 x 25 mm |
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| Obverse description | Plain cream paper stock with all text in black letterpress. The word TOKEN is set in large bold capitals at centre, with "Emergency Sales Tax" and "Good for One" above in mixed-case type, and "at Colfax, Wash. / Colfax Retail Trade Bureau" below. No vignette or ornamental border. |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | Emergency Sales Tax Good for One TOKEN at Colfax, Wash. Colfax Retail Trade Bureau |
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| Comments |
Sales tax tokens were a genuinely American solution to an arithmetically awkward problem: when state sales tax rates of 1–2% were applied to small purchases, the resulting fractions of a cent couldn't be collected in coin. Washington State enacted its retail sales tax in 1935, and merchants across the state issued scrip-like tokens to handle the sub-cent rounding. The Colfax Retail Trade Bureau's paper version is among the more locally specific examples — Colfax, the seat of Whitman County, was wheat country, and a merchant association issuing its own fractional tax currency says something about how seriously small-town retailers took the administrative burden.