NOTN- City and Borough of Juneau (CBJ) Utility Billing is applying sales tax exemptions passed in the October 2025 municipal election to CBJ’s December 2025 utility billing period. Residential, non-commercial customers of CBJ water and wastewater will not be charged sales tax starting this December. Residential, non-commercial customers with a current senior sales tax exemption will also receive a 100% sales tax exemption.
Juneau Mayor Beth Weldon said the changes are intended to remove sales tax from residential utility costs, though the city has instituted a 180-day grace period to correct any misclassifications.
“In order to do the intent the voters wanted, we just had to make a very high level residential versus commercial, and the exemptions are only supposed to be on residential. So we may end up putting some sales tax back on some things if we erroneously labelled them as residential and they were actually commercial. So if houses and that kind of stuff are used for commercial means, like offices or Airbnbs, then they wouldn’t be exempt, necessarily.”
Grocery stores are adapting to the food-tax exemptions as well with each store processing the adoption differently.
Weldon said some stores are automatically removing tax on eligible food items, while others may require customers to separate food from non-food items at checkout. Prepared or hot foods, such as deli fried chicken or macaroni salad, may not exempt under the measure.
Customers who believe they are incorrectly designated as commercial may need to apply for a sales tax exemption card to affirm residential and non-commercial status. Visit juneau.org/finance/sales-tax for more information about Proposition 2 implementation.
