anthony aalto: "$40,000 per year on retail items that charge the 0.5% GET surcharge for rail, pay just $218 per family."

Please stop doing that.  

Either you know, or should know that the we don't have a simple sales tax here. We have a general excise tax that is added in at multiple levels of products and services and "pyramids."  The GET has been described at being "viciously effective" at separating residents from their money and helps explain why such a low appearing tax generates such massive collections. 

 It has been calculated that our GET is roughly equivelent to a 12%-16% sales tax.  Except sales taxes usually exempt things like medicine, rent, and food, and our GET taxes those things just as heavily.

tl;dr:  We don't have a simple sales tax, we have a general excise tax which has a much higher effective rate than you are claiming and is highly regressive.  Please stop trying to mislead people.