Text 16642, 70 rader
Skriven 2011-04-10 06:03:16 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
  Kommentar till text 16602 av Mark Hofmann (1:261/1304)
Ärende: Australian immigration
==============================
Replying to a message of Mark Hofmann to Bob Ackley :

 >> assessing a sales tax on items purchased out of state.  The problem the 
 >> states have is (a) most people don't know about that 'use' tax and (b)
 >> it's really hard to  collect it.  Some states - Nebraska and Iowa
 >> being two - also have annual 'Personal  Property Tax' assessed on
 >> everything one owns, including one's underwear.  Both states  have
 >> currently exempted from the tax everything except motor vehicles, RVs
 >> and boats.

 MH> Many people go over the MD line to Delaware to buy large items tax
 MH> free, but MD has raised the "toll" on I-95 to get there.  There are
 MH> still ways to go there without the toll, however.  

 MH> MD also has property tax.  It is on real estate only, however.  They
 MH> already nail us on our auto registration renewals.  I just renewed
 MH> our truck today - $180!

Must be an old one.  The bite in Nebraska for newer vehicles can get well into
four digits.  And Nebraska is absolutely paranoid about people who own land in
Iowa registering their vehicles here - where it's a LOT cheaper.

Nebraska occasionally sends it gendarmes to patrol apartment parking lots
looking for 
out-of-state tags on cars.  People at Offutt AFB used to get a LOT of flak from
Nebraska because they registered their cars in their home states instead of in
Nebraska;
the feds finally set the state right on that score, though.

 MH>  We should have roads/highways made out of
 MH> platinum for how much this state collects from people everywhere you
 MH> look.

Actually, it seems that the more roads there are the more cars appear - which
is grounds
for building more roads.  IMO they should just stop building and widening
roads.

A couple of decades ago a number of people bought acreages along the Platte
River between
Omaha and Lincoln.  After they got situated they started bitching because the
road in front
of their (very expen$ive) houses wasn't paved and the dust bothered them, so
the county 
widened and paved the road.  Then they started bitching that the Interstate
between them
and Omaha was too narrow (only 2 lanes eastbound) and it took too long to
commute to work,
so the state widened the highway.  And now more developments are going up
between Omaha
and Lincoln.  AFAIC the government should just have told those folks that they
knew what
the situation was when they moved there - and that they're perfectly free to
move to the
slums of beautiful downtown Omaha if they wish.

Back when I was working, one of our programmers had a home somewhere way west
of
Omaha.  It was cheaper for him to lease an apartment across the street from the
company
than commute every day.  Even before that we had a part-time X-Ray tech at the
hospital
I worked in who lived on a farm outside Brewster, NE, which is about 400 miles
west of
Omaha as the roads go; she'd come in on Friday, stay with a friend in town and
go back
home on Monday.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)