Gunner Asch fired this volley in
:


What does the State Do to deserve 1/3 to 1/2 of your or my money?????

Hummmmmm????

Gunner

I can take that further, Ig (Gunny).

I live in a rural area where my insurance fees and taxes have quintupled
in eight years. I don't make enough money to afford this, but on my
relatively modest home and 20 acres of beef cattle, I now pay over $10K
in taxes and insurance every year. That may be small compared to New
Yawk, but this is scrub-pine, cattle country, woodsy Florida, away from
ALL attractions.

That's _after_ an "agricultural exemption" that allows about a 13%
reduction on the taxes for the _land_ (not the house).

To boot, I asked my county people when A) we will get a paved road, and
B)when we will get a fire department within 20 minutes run of our site.

The answer was (actually and literally) "Don't hold your breath. There
are NO plans to _ever_ do that."

I also pay (separately) to have my garbage collected -- it's not part of
my "privilege tax" for living here in this county, although other
residents of the county have it included in their ad-velorum taxes. If I
don't pay the fee (even if I never have any garbage to collect), the
county puts a lien on my property. I have an elderly neighbor (82) who
lives about 1/2 mile OFF the dirt road we live on. The garbage
collection company refuses to drive down his private drive to pick up his
trash, because it "disrupts their schedule", so he personally hauls it to
the county dump in his trailer.

Thus, he didn't feel the need to renew his garbage pickup contract with
the county. They put a lien on his house, and it grows semi-annually,
because he'll be damned if they're going to get the money.

Here's the rub. Mine and his tax rate is the same as those in the areas
that receive the benefits. They have fire protection. They have tax-
included garbage collection. They have paved roads. As a result of the
fire protection, the "protection class" of their homes diminishes to
where their insurance bill is less than 20% of mine. Yet, we pay for the
same services, and receive them not.

Bottom line? The "state" (county, district, municipality, whatever
money-sucking entity you want to name) does _nothing_ for the right to
steal my money, but yet they do.

And here's the bad part (like the rest wasn't?): When I moved here ten
years ago, this was "ag district", so our taxes were less, and insurance
companies loved us, because unlike the stupid city-slickers, we knew
enough not to burn down our own houses.

In eight years, the county commissioners found a "fatted calf", and
screwed us; they re-zoned this area "estate farms" (in their memos) and
"rural residential" in zone name -- although over 90% of this and the
surrounding 4500 acres is in beef cattle and sylviculture. In the same
time, the insurance companies noticed they weren't earning as much as the
wanted to on the claims they never had to pay, and bumped up our rates
because we have "estate homes" (not farms, anymore).

It's theft. If I ever get a chance to tweak the money back out of these
robbers, I shall (lawsuit, whatever... and I'm not litigious). If I ever
find a way to cheat the system by hiding what I have in a loophole they
provided, I shall (and they make a lot of them for themselves).

They have made crooks of honest men. And that's what the estate tax
does. It steals from folks until they find a way to hide and sequester
what they've earned, so the government can't pillage it. The estate tax
makes crooks of honest men.

LLoyd