I got my first ever property tax assessment today! Whoo-hoo!!

The BBQ Pit
#1

Today I am officially a taxpayer. People would always tell me, “Man, what do you have to complain about, you don’t even pay taxes, you’re a student!” Today I have earned the right to complain, and complain I shall.

Property taxes on my Dakota pickup came to a modest $240…modest for anyone but a perpetually broke college student. And Og bless those guys at the assessor’s office, they even itemized it to tell me how much of that money was being taken from me for each particular entity. And the grand prize goes to…

PUBLIC SCHOOLS!! No surpirse there. $200 of the total goes there.

I have performed my duty at each election, voting consistently against any and all school bond issues and related property tax increases. And my efforts have, of course, failed. Why? Because we live in a democracy. Democracy, for those unfamiliar with it, is the system in which the majority gets to gang up and steal money from the minority at their whim. Since the voter base consists largely of family-type people, they get to band together and take money from us single, childless sorts.

So what am I getting from my $200? Nothing. I do not presently have, nor will I ever have children (if I can help it, and may Og bless me with a long childless life.) The education these children get will only help them: A) displace me from my job someday, probably right before I’d be eligible for a nice retirement package, B) manipulate the system to take yet more of my money, and C) contribute to the overeducation of America which has ruined the value of an education on the marketplace. It’s not like this is balancing out the public education I received. My father was a homeowner, and probably paid in taxes more than enough to have bought me a nice private education.

What is the community getting from my $200? Well, when somebody steals your money, do you really care how he spends it? But pretending I did…my schoolteacher friend Helen teaches her class from a trailer. What the hell? The property tax rate here is 4.75, plenty high already. Are they just squandering my money on dozens of worthless administrators who make tens of thousands a year to sit in an office and design zero-tolerance policies?

So I say, with a hearty grin, fuck family values. Fuck family interests. Fuck families. Long live the single and childless! :cool:

#2

Congratulations! But you’ve only just begun. Each day becomes better than the next.

#3

Good thing there’s not an entity to tax stupid fucking rants.

Taxes are levied to contribute to the good community overall. What, you only want to build roads you use? Pay for the schools you go to? Pay for the police for only the hour or two you may need them each year? Overeducation of America, indeed.

We do agee on one thing, however… I also hope you don’t procreate.

#4

California has a %1 property tax on homes. When I bought my house, I figured .01xprice=tax; and budgeted for that. An assessor showed up and said my home was really worth price+30K, and I get to pay $300 more.

I’m not a rich guy. I may not pull $30k this year. The house was a fixer-upper, as they say. It had been on the market for months.

I appealed, and lost. grrrrrr.

#5 
I'm having an awful lot of trouble reconciling parts of this post.   You're a college student, so you recently got out of public schools.   So...I guess now that you're done we should shut them all down?    Chances are, once you get out of college you'll be agitating against paying taxes to support your state university too.

As for what you’re getting for your $200.00, it’s paying for the town to put up with your otherwise worthless student ass while you’re getting drunk and rowdy outside the local student hangouts. It might even pay for part of the bill if you get in an accident in that Dakota pickup and have to be swabbed up off the city pavements.

I also can’t quite reconcile “poor college student” with Dakota pickup new enough to justify a $240.00 tax charge. If you want to cry “poor college student”, drive a beater with its associated $25.00/year minimum tax charge.

#6

As I said, my parents were homeowners. They paid for my so-called “free” public education. You can call it a tax or a tuition, it amounts to the same thing. I don’t owe the public schools diddly-squat, except perhaps a kick in the pants. My high school featured one teacher who slept with his students (both male and female) and one who murdered his family. So blow off about what I got from the public schools, it was paid off in excess. As for my state university, I will have paid tuition for 5 years of undergraduate education and 3 years of law school, when all’s said and done. I think I took care of that, as well. When I’m paying hundreds per month on my student loans for the next 15 years, I don’t think I’ll be musing to myself, “Boy, how can I repay the university for all they did for me?” I am paying for it – with interest.

Presume much? The bill was itemized, $200 of it is going specifically to the local public schools. I’m not complaining about the $13.25 for the new library, the $2.07 for roads, or the $16.97 for city services. If they gotta mop me off the pavement (and what the hell is with that remark) then they’ll have the cash for that. I’m complaining about the big 'ol $200 going to fund the public school system, a system I firmly believe should be abolished and replaced with a private one.

By the way, your conception of college towns is downright ignorant. The townies get the benefit in sales tax of all the extra commerce generated by the student population. Columbia is a decent-sized town, but still many businesses have to go to reduced-hours during summer break, because they thrive off the student population. Furthermore, it’s such a nice place to live that a fair number of students end up living here after school, growing the city and bringing in yet more revenue. So don’t act like the townies are just putting up with my “otherwise worthless student ass”. Our student asses are what makes this town tick.

#7

RexDart, it sounds like you could use a little dose of anti-ignorance:

UMC is a public university. What you call “tuition” is only a small fraction of the cost of educating your sorry punk ass. The tax-payers of Missouri pick up the rest. Yes, that’s right. Have you ever wondered why tuition in every single private university in the nation is higher than what you’re paying? It’s because those guys are paying the full cost of getting themselves edumacated. Well, not even that, because alumnus donations and endowments and such help out as well.

Think because your parents were homeowners, that the full cost of your primary and secondary educations were paid in full as well? So what, you think that people with multi-million dollar mansions just get extra education from the public school system? No, it’s because, once again, your education was subsidized by other people. Here’s a little problem solving question for you: take your home state’s entire education budget. Everything, money from property taxes, federal money, the whole shebang. Divide by the number of students. Now, compare this number to the total amount of money your parents contributed to education only, annually. This should be a small fraction of federal income taxes, plus the majority of property taxes. Take a wild guess which one is larger? Come on, you’re a college educated lad, surely you can work this out.

Trust me here, if you are a poor student, the absolutely last thing you EVER want is for everyone to be completely responsible for the total cost of everything they consume, and nothing else.

#8

Don’t get me started on property taxes. :mad:

#9

Yeah… 6% interest on a tax-deductible, federally backed, unsecured student loan. Let’s see you get any kind of unsecured debt at 12% right now. 18%? 21%? Beats the hell outta the deferred 4% (after tax) handouts you got. I worked my ass through school and didn’t have to rely on other people’s tax revenue to fund my loans. Congatulations, Lionel Hutz.

Rex: Best of luck, barrister.

For people other than Rex: I’m not bagging on student loans. Just the putzes who take them then bitch about paying taxes for education.

#10

On behalf of the public, allow me to say thank you.

#11

Macro Man wrote:

Yeah, the good community of politicians and bureaucrats.

#12

In case you haven’t noticed, the majority of citizens pay a lot more than $240 a year in taxes. Many pay hundreds and thousands times more. $240 does not even begin to cover the benefit you get from society (roads, defense, police, fire, etc.), which should be clear from the itemization of your bill (or do you think that 16 bucks per person really covers your city’s expenses?).

Frankly, you have a lot further to go up the tax brackets before you earn the right to complain!

(figuratively speaking, of course… nobody’s going to stop you from complaining, just mock you severely :))

#13

Well, shit. When you set it up so that your only source of goods and services is from a monopoly government, what the hell do you expect? I don’t know what the lady who sits in the back at the municipal tax collectors’s office is paid to stare at people while she ponders a piece of paper for twenty minutes, but if it’s a dollar, it’s too much.