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Money Rant

Seventeen Thousand Dollars

Oh what a tangled web we weave.   Loads on my mind today: Taxes, Tiger Woods, and Mr. Darling NYC.

The dogs are sitting on the bed looking expectantly but God only knows when we will walk again judging by the gloomy weather reports.

I seemed to have stirred up yet another hornets nest.

I want to make something clear to my hornets.  Like many of you I pay thousands of dollars in tax: federal, state and local taxes.  I pay sales tax, road tax and property tax.  In fact of all the taxes I pay the one that galls me most is my property tax, which at  $17,000 a year is unforgivably huge.

SEVENTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS A YEAR.

An equivalent property tax in the UK for a similarly priced home would be $3,000 at most.

I pay all of my many and various taxes begrudgingly because if I don’t the state will take my home.  Why begrudgingly you may ask?  Well, a good proportion of my tax funds bogus wars I do not agree with and bank bailouts that counter my free market sympathies.   Wars and bailouts that just make a few people very, very rich and kill many, many innocent people.

My tax dollars help kill thousands of innocent people.

As one reader points out, I can’t vote so I am not able to have a say in the way my taxes are spent.  I am not allowed to get involved with politics here in the USA so I have no legitimate soapbox from which to stand and complain.   I only have this blog.

Rather than cast me as unpatriotic, ungrateful or as an America basher why can’t you understand that I, as a taxpayer have every right not to agree with the status quo.  The attitude some of my readers have that we have no option, that we are powerless in the face of government, that an opposing view is un-American, that the IRS has a right to rip us off so we may as well get used to it..is simply astounding.

My desire for all of us and our children is that we get what the rest of the developed world takes for granted:  that for just about the same amount of tax we pay or less in the case of the British the PEOPLE get so much more.  Let me tell you again:  three free years of education, public transportation, well maintained highways, healthcare, public arts, BBC etc. etc.

It is sickening that the majority of our tax dollars are simply drained away from the public to fight expensive wars, imprison people in private prisons, subsidize the pharmaceutical industry..the list is endless!    As a taxpayer I am outraged that so little of our hard earned cash works for the common good, for the investment in people so that we might halt this rapid decline and encourage invention, entrepreneurialism, and industry.

The price for a total lack of investment in the American people will be catastrophic.

Is it even logical to saddle the young with huge student loans and expensive health insurance whilst you fight costly wars or fund bank bailouts?  Can’t you see that education and healthcare are basic human rights and serve any prosperous nation? An educated and healthy workforce will serve a country so much better than those who live in fear of economic insecurity or health related bankruptcy.

I maintain my assertion that yesterdays mad Joe into the IRS stunt was a metaphor and should be understood as such.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear to all of you.  I believed in this country so much I moved all of my personal wealth from Britain only to see it vanish because of appalling fiscal mismanagement and endemic government mandated greed.  Greed that has not only destroyed our shared dream, the American Dream that many of us still believe in but the dreams of the next generation.

Of course I don’t want to fly an airplane into an IRS building but can understand the murderous frustration of someone who does.

13 replies on “Seventeen Thousand Dollars”

Hear Hear!! Well said Mr. Roy, and I can say this because I am an American. I only wish that the people who represent me in government had as much sense. Thank you

Your property taxes, at least, aren’t paying for wars and bailouts and deaths. Those are what income taxes do. Your property taxes pay for much more local things, like road maintenance and schools. The things that you want your taxes to go toward.

Duncan, I prefer to be a Queen Bee….not the hornet type….obvioulsy if you moved everything you do believe in America, or maybe a truer statement is you could make a better living in America? Of course you have the right to say whatever you want to and bash away….BUT…why don’t you do something about it, help the homeless, get involved in an antiwar group…take some action. Joe took the wrong action….

Am so afraid that my current Prime Minister is leading us out of the sun and down the road into the muck right behind the Americans.

Duncan, I think you might like the work of artist Erica Grimm-Vance.

$17,000 property tax is local, not the IRS, not for the Dept of Defense
think think think Duncan
take a look at your resentments

chardma, looking over my blog I think I have made it perfectly clear that it is the size of the property tax compared with elsewhere that irritates me. read, read, read and take a look at your comprehension..maybe?

“Well, a good proportion of my tax funds bogus wars’

not your property tax duncan
love and fellowship
c

Have you thought about having your property taxes re-assesed? I don’t know when you bought the home, but if the market value has gone below what you paid for it LA County will re-asses. I still own a home in LA County and I had this done last year. Not sure what the housing market in Malibu has been doing. I assume your taxes are based off 1.25% of the purchase price you paid. Just a thought.

I couldn’t agree more, Duncan, and as a patriotic American, I don’t understand those who think your comments are bashing America. Do they say the same about the Tea Baggers who are instigating violence? I didn’t think so . . .

No one ever wants to say it, but perhaps the bottomless pockets when it comes to war-mongering while we have so much preventable human suffering at home speaks volumes about what this country’s values really are. Shoot — even when times were flush & those tax cuts for the rich were supposed to be good for all, people were STILL dying because they didn’t have access to medical care. People — including innocent children — were STILL homeless. We were STILL trashing the environment. We STILL had children in school buildings that are condemned. And we STILL have people living — and not by choice — without running water.

Those problems are “impossible” to solve, but killing? Oh, yeah — we kick butt at that.

I wouldn’t call anything in this post America-bashing per se, but I personally think the comparison of property taxes in Malibu to property taxes in the U.K. is kind of an apples & oranges thing. One is a local municipality and the other is an independent nation. We also pay a fortune in taxes on our country property here in Connecticut (more than double what you’re paying in CA), but when we used to live down south the taxes were unbelievaby low. We had a fairly large place there, and the total property tax bill was just over three hundred dollars annually. So it all depends where you live. That said, I know how you feel! Each time we write a check to the local receiver of taxes, we cringe and ask ourselves why we continue to live in what is clearly one of the most highly taxed parts of this country. But it’s home I guess, so we stay and keep right on paying.

And I agree with Jenny. I remember reading about that proposition which was passed out there a while back (Prop. 8 was it?), and it’s evidently now much easier to get your property reassessed if you live in L.A. County. If you can show evidence that your property has depreciated recently, there’s a good chance your tax bill may be signifcantly reduced. I believe you can even access the proper forms online. I know absolutely nothing about your particular property or its value, but it’s probably worth a shot anyway.

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