No Fun With Taxes
WKTV had a story about the looming tax increase and the number of people buying cars at the last minute. They also provided the entertining calculation that a $20,000 automobile will cost $300 more in taxes. This is in addition to the $1,650 that one would already be paying. Cars are an especially difficult issue since taxes must be paid in city/county of residence. If you knew of someone in another county who would let you let you have the registration mailed there, it would still have to be registered in another county for a couple of years.
Of course, we're stuck. If you're not, get out of the area, for your own sake. Rome is especially trapped since it's about an hour in any direction to the next county. That's not exactly worth the price of gas to get 2% lower taxes on $100 worth of groceries. However, I do propose one measure. I will not buy anything on March 1st, maybe not on the 2nd either. I'll fill that tank this week and get my groceries now. I would like everyone to freeze out the city of Rome for that one day.
By the way, New York State has a state sales tax rate of 4.25%. Florida's is 4%.
Of course, we're stuck. If you're not, get out of the area, for your own sake. Rome is especially trapped since it's about an hour in any direction to the next county. That's not exactly worth the price of gas to get 2% lower taxes on $100 worth of groceries. However, I do propose one measure. I will not buy anything on March 1st, maybe not on the 2nd either. I'll fill that tank this week and get my groceries now. I would like everyone to freeze out the city of Rome for that one day.
By the way, New York State has a state sales tax rate of 4.25%. Florida's is 4%.
posted by RomeHater @ 5:23 PM
3 Comments:
At February 21, 2005 6:27 PM,
Craig Howard said…
Amazing isn't it how upstate New York has been hollowed out by our taxes -- yet everyone just seems to put up with it. Utica and Rome are two prime examples.
Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo are declining just as rapidly but being larger, the decline takes longer to become visible.
Of course in Buffalo, we've been practicing decline for so long now (going on 50 years) that we're getting pretty good at it.
We did manage to keep our sales tax at a relatively "modest" 8.25%, though. Of course we have no county government left either (except of course the Medicaid Department and the Welfare Department.)
Albany forbids you to get rid of those. Hey, I've got 4WD. Who really needs those snowplows?
Of course, I'm not sure how the poor will make it to their free healthcare appointments when the roads are blocked.
At February 22, 2005 5:49 PM,
Julia said…
If you really want the boycott to work, you should try to convince those who live near a countyline to travel to neighboring counties to do their shopping/etc. That or order as much online as possible. One or two days isn't going to amount to much. And especially encourage this in the fourth quarter (AKA Holiday Season) if you want to really screw the county. I know there was one year our county (Chautauqua) made up our sales tax projections during the 4th quarter, even when we lagged the rest of the year.
At February 22, 2005 7:32 PM,
RomeHater said…
That's a good point. I have been planning to work out a map of nearby counties for Oneida residents. In Rome's case the nearest county would be pretty far unless you were buying a big ticket item. A place like Utica could do well with going to Herkimer county.
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