Los Angeles County’s sales tax rate goes up on October 1, 2026. Voters narrowly approved Measure ER in the June 2 primary, adding a half-cent to the countywide rate — taking unincorporated LA County from 9.75% to 10.25%. If you ring up a sale in La Crescenta, Montrose, Glendale, or anywhere else in the county, the rate your register charges on October 1 is not the rate it charged on September 30. Here’s what changed and what breaks if you don’t touch it.
What Measure ER does
Measure ER — the Essential Services Restoration Act, placed on the ballot by Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Hilda Solis — is a half-cent (0.5%) general sales tax for Los Angeles County. It passed with roughly 50.9% of the vote on June 2, 2026, needing only a simple majority. The county projects about $1 billion a year to backfill state and federal cuts to county health programs and clinics. It’s temporary on paper: five years, through October 1, 2031.
What it does not change is the tax base. Groceries and prescription medications stay exempt, so what was untaxed at your market in September is untaxed in October.
Your rate follows your address, not your mailing city
This is where foothill businesses get burned. State law caps combined district taxes at 10.25% in Los Angeles County, and several cities were already sitting at or near that ceiling before Measure ER. When the county last raised the rate, the increase simply wasn’t imposed in the cities that would have blown past the cap. As of this writing the CDTFA hasn’t posted its final city-by-city table for October, so don’t assume your storefront lands on the county headline rate.
That matters more here than most places. Much of La Crescenta is unincorporated Los Angeles County; a few blocks away you’re in the City of Glendale, with its own add-ons. We mapped that boundary in our La Crescenta and Glendale tax map, and the advice hasn’t changed: run the street address through the CDTFA rate lookup, not the ZIP code. Then do it again in late September, once the October rates are published.
What actually breaks on October 1
One piece of good news: October 1 is a quarter boundary. District rate changes always land on January 1, April 1, July 1, or October 1 for exactly this reason — your fourth-quarter return covers October through December at a single rate, with no split-period arithmetic. The trouble sits upstream of the return:
- Your point-of-sale system. It doesn’t update itself. A register still charging the old rate in November isn’t saving your customers money — you owe the difference either way, out of margin.
- Open quotes and recurring invoices. Anything dated before October 1 but delivered after it needs a second look. The rate follows the sale, not the estimate.
- Online and delivery channels. Ordering platforms and shopping carts each keep their own rate table — every one is a separate place to check.
- Tax-inclusive pricing. If your menu or shelf price includes tax, half a cent on the dollar comes straight off your margin until you reprice.
Half a percent sounds like a rounding error, and per transaction it is. Across a year of receipts it isn’t: a business with $800,000 in taxable sales is looking at roughly $4,000 that has to be collected rather than absorbed. The real risk isn’t the rate — it’s undercollecting for a few weeks and learning about it at audit, when the CDTFA bills you for tax you never charged.
Before October 1
- Look up the new rate for each location’s street address at the CDTFA rate lookup — and check again after the October rates post
- Update the rate in your POS, accounting software, e-commerce cart, and any third-party ordering platform
- Review open quotes and recurring invoices that will deliver on or after October 1
- Tell whoever runs your register the change lands on a date, not “sometime this fall”
- Watch the CDTFA special notices page for the official October 1 rate notice
- Restaurant or market? Pair this with our guide to what’s taxable dine-in vs. to-go — the rate changed, the rules didn’t
- Ballotpedia — LA County Measure ER, Sales Tax Increase for Health Services (June 2026)
- LAist — LA County’s latest bid to raise taxes, Measure ER, narrowly passes
- NBC Los Angeles — Measure ER passes, set to increase LA County sales tax
- CDTFA — California city & county sales and use tax rates (address lookup)
- CDTFA — Explanation of tax rate changes (by operative date)
- CDTFA — Special notices and notification letters
This article is general information, not tax advice for your specific situation. Rules change and details matter — talk to a CPA (we know one) before acting on anything here.