Yes, today after a very long and tedious deliberation California finally has a budget for this fiscal year (if governeor Schwarzenegger signs it which I don’t doubt he will). What will it do – well in short do what we impeached Gray Davis mostly for – raise taxes.
I happen to live in Los Angeles where our sales tax is currently at 8.25% charged on pretty much everything people buy (food for the most part is “generously” excluded). With the budget’s tax increase of 1% and the soon to be effective 0.5% increase for the L.A. county our effective sales tax will be 9.75%. That’s 10% folks for us who round up and like to deal with easy numbers, but who’s counting.
I am your average Joe my effective federal income tax rate is about 23.9% a year (after deductions and such), my California income tax rate is 10.3% so after all is said and done when I receive a paycheck I have already been taxed 34.2%. That’s more than a third, now thanks to our brand new budget I will be charged another 10% on anything I buy, which is another income tax of sorts making my tax that I pay the federal government and state government a total of 44% give or take of my income. Does that sound crazy to anyone else?
I happen to come from a small eastern european country and we were under slavery about 100 years or so. My grandparents were being “charged” 10% flat on anything and everything they made. That was it – 10%! How does that compare to more than 4 times what I will very shortly be paying.
My solution for now will be the following – buy everything I need as much as I can from online retailers in other states and avoid the California tax. If more people do this it will hurt local businesses even more than they already are hurting, adding insult to injury. This in turn will keep prolonging or even worsening our situation. I would feel bad, but I have to look out for myself because obviously nobody else will.
The whole thing baffles me. I have a lot more to add to this but I need to take a breath and get back to my job so I can give Uncle Sam and uncle Schwartzenegger 44% of everything I make.
What do you think? Where do you stand? Voice your opinions!
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