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+--- Thread: The Occupation Tax (/thread-12441.html)
- Thomas - 10-17-2004
You might remember my ranting a few weeks ago about this tax on the wine business. Well, an election year has its benefits.
Seems the wine industry is being courted and this tax has been or is being rescinded.
Makes my day! Would have made my earlier days better had it been rescinded when I was producing wine.
[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 10-17-2004).]
- hotwine - 10-17-2004
Sounds great.... but careful they don't replace it with something like a "breathing tax" or maybe a "blinking tax". Bureacrats can be very creative when it comes to shafting the taxpayer.
Story broke locally this morning that the local tax assessor has been giving a pass to high-end properties, because they tend to change hands quietly, without the usual appraisals and financing or even advertising. Since the assessor relies on sales of comparables to clue him in to a fair market value, and there are few comparables made public, he simply doesn't assess them at all..... and lets lower and middle income homeowners carry the property tax burden for everyone.
Like you said, an election year does have its benefits.
- Thomas - 10-18-2004
Hotwine, the best answer I ever got from a bureaucrat came last month at a town meeting. The assessor talked about four suits against his office for over assessing some and under assessing others. When asked what he thought the outcome of the suits would be he said, "We'll lose. We always lose a tax assessment lawsuit."
My ears perked up. I asked.
"If you always lose aren't there two things you might want to ask yourself? One: why do we pursue lawsuits at the taxpayer's expense that we know we can't win? Two: is it possible that we lose because we have a bad system that needs fixing?"
He looked at me for a few seconds, like a cow watching a train go by, and then he said. "I don't think we should change anything."
[This message has been edited by foodie (edited 10-18-2004).]
- hotwine - 10-18-2004
Sounds like your assessor thrives on the status quo. Maybe he gets a bonus for every assessment he defends in court...
Here, property tax receipts fund city & county roads, public education K-12 (plus a very extensive community college network), fire/police/emergency medical services, water and waste, public transportation, and something called the "county hospital district" (read: indigent health care for the 800 lb gorilla on our backs, the illegal immigrant population).
Our assessor is an elected official and has really been in office too long.
- Thomas - 10-18-2004
Methinks the property tax system is truly broken; in NY it is supposed to fund the same stuff you mention--but it never seems to do so, and always seems to favor some group over another.
Methinks the income tax system is broken too--we know that favors a shifting variety of groups at any given moment.
In fact, methinks somewhere between the two tax systems lies the answer to our tax woes. But that would be thinking out of the box, something politicians and bureaucrats simply can't and won't do, unless the box is filled with contributions...
- Kcwhippet - 10-18-2004
Do I detect a bit of Libertarian thinking there?
- Thomas - 10-18-2004
Maybe. What is Libertarian thinkiing?
Last I heard from a guy who said he is a Libertarian is that he thought we should have gates around communities and private security guards.
I asked: don't we already have that?
He moaned in reply.
Seriously, if I had any guts I'd be a anarchist [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/eek.gif[/img]