The Juneau Assembly is moving forward with a plan to ask voters this fall whether to implement a seasonal sales tax system aimed at capturing more revenue during the busy cruise season.
If approved, the change would raise the local sales tax from the current flat 5% to 7.5% from April through September, and lower it to 3.5% during the off-season from October through March.
The proposal is part of a push by city leaders to match revenue with the city’s seasonal visitors, driven in large part by the 1.7 million cruise visitors who come through each summer
At a recent finance committee meeting, Assembly members voted to open the proposal for public comment later this month before deciding whether to place it on the October municipal ballot.
Local media reports say that this points to similar systems in other Southeast Alaska towns like Ketchikan, Sitka and Skagway.
Assembly member Alicia Hughes-Skandijs said the seasonal approach makes sense as the city tries to balance economic gains with community impacts. “In what is an increasingly seasonal economy, it makes sense to capture maximum yield when you have all these folks in town,” she said.
Lifetime Juneau resident, Noah Locklear, spoke out against the tax hike saying, “This is the most anti-tourist push I’ve seen in 62 years.”
But the seasonal tax proposal is just one piece of a broader strategy by Juneau officials and advocacy groups to manage the growing cruise presence.
The city recently backed a daily ship cap of five vessels, with 16,000 passengers per day on weekdays and 12,000 on Saturdays, starting in 2026. A separate petition seeks to establish an annual cap on total cruise passengers.
Last fall, a “Ship-Free Saturdays” initiative narrowly failed, and earlier this year, the city withdrew support for a Royal Caribbean-backed dock project on Douglas Island, citing lack of transparency and concern it could bypass local agreements.
That project, involving a partnership with Alaska Native corporation Goldbelt, remains controversial as Juneau navigates how to accommodate tourism without overwhelming its infrastructure or residents.
