New Jersey to now tax
water supply as well – Creative Greed of Taxes, by Martin Armstrong, 7/20/18.
Politicians are truly
amazing. When they need money, they are never short of ideas of things to tax.
New Jersey is proposing to now tax water from the tap. The proposal is being
submitted by State Senator Bob Smith D-Middlesex. Of course, Smith is trying to
say it’s not actually a tax and calling it a “user fee” even though you already
get a water bill. A “user fee” would be a flat rate. He wants 10 cents per
1,000 gallons so it functions more like a tax than a one-time fee like getting
a driver’s license. Smith obtained his J.D. in 1981 from the Seton Hall
University School of Law. The only thing law teaches you is how to call a pig a
cow and get away with it. It is probably inevitable that they will figure out a
way to tax the air for making it clean.
They have in a way
managed to tax sex as well over the centuries. In Nevada, they have proposed a
$5 tax every time a prostitute performs a service. This is nothing new. The
Roman Emperor Caligula (37-41AD) inaugurated a tax upon prostitutes per client
(the vectigal ex capturis). There was the bachelor tax which was a punitive tax
imposed on unmarried men. The Lex Papia Poppaea was introduced in 9 AD by Emperor
Augustus (27BC-14AD) to encourage marriage. Penalties were therefore imposed on
those who were celibate, with an exception granted to Vestal Virgins. (Ulp.
Frag. xvii.1). The law also imposed penalties on married persons who had no
children from the age of twenty-five to sixty in a man. Women were taxed who
had no children from the age of twenty to fifty (Gaius, ii.111) (Tacit. Ann.
xv.19). As strange as that may sound, New Jersey and Michigan proposed a tax on
bachelor men to change their behavior. They would also tax people without
children within the member states of the Warsaw Pact to produce children for
the army.
There have been plenty
of ingenious excuses to impose taxes. When it comes to taxes, politicians just
always show their creativity. California wanted to tax per mile a spacecraft
traveled in the air after launch. Taxes are supposed to be about using
services. They create a road and you pay to use it. Taxing space shots was
really insane for they created nothing. Another issue that is probably
unconstitutional turns on taxing people who have no right to object in a
democratic process. Taxation without representation is what California began by
taxing sports players for playing a game in California. Now many states have
followed suit. The same process is underway in Europe. It was California which
first imposed the Jock Tax back in 1991 as retribution following the Chicago
Bulls beating the LA Lakers in the finals. The politicians wanted to punish
Chicago and boldly said that the next time “His Airness” (Michael Jordan)
played in Los Angeles, the money he made on those games was officially
subjected to the California State Income Tax. Since that time, half of the
states in the union have followed California and adopted a Jock Tax, taking a
cut from high-paid heroes. So they get to tax your income for services you do
not use and you have no right to object because you cannot vote in that state.
That is taxation without representation – the reason for the American
Revolution.
This clever way of
figuring out things to tax has been going on since colonial days. Before income
taxes, England imposed the Window Tax of 1696. They taxed you per window you
had in your home. This was imposed in England, Scotland, and Great British
Empire and enforced throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The wealthy had
bigger houses and a lot of windows. This tax directly led to the bricking up of
many windows you will still see to this day. But they also altered society with
the Window Tax in many ways creating row housing. That way you had fewer
windows. Once Britain adopted the Window Tax, it spread around Europe. You will
see old buildings in Poland with the windows still bricked in to reduce the
taxes. If you get to visit Kraków, just walk the street in the old city and you
will see more windows bricked up than open on some streets.
In Philadelphia, they
also adopted the Window Tax being part of the British Empire. You see row
housing in the old city to avoid the Window Tax. The clever minds of greedy politicians
did not stop there. The term taking a “step up in life” came about because they
also began to tax the number of steps you had into your house. The more steps,
the higher the tax. So if you had more steps that meant you were rich.
The Global Warming
crowd is supported by the government because it provides the excuse to invent
taxes. They argue that the number one producer of methane gas is cows who are
causing global warming more so than cars. Now cow flatulence is the leading
cause of global warming because of a cow’s slow digestion, mixed with a
gas-producing diet of greens. Hence, to somehow reduce global warming, they
claim that storing thousands of cows in one location creates large clouds of
methane. To somehow make global warming OK as long as you pay a tax, Ireland,
and Denmark, along with other EU nations, have begun taxing cattle owners on
cow flatulence. The argument is that cows are responsible for 18% of the
greenhouse gases causing global warming. Now Ireland is taxing farmers $18 per
cow while Danish farmers pay $110 per cow. None of this reduces global warming,
it just creates more revenue for the politicians.
They imposed taxes on
spirits and cigarettes to encourage people to stop drinking and smoking – so
they claimed. However, when the governments realized that stopping smoking is
costly for them as tax revenue declined, they then imposed like New York City
taxes on e-cigarettes. Sweden and other EU member states have suddenly realized
they have a similar problem with people switching to electric cars. OMG, tax
revenue will evaporate into the clean air. Now they are looking at taxing the
electricity that replaces fossil fuels.
In the USA, Oregon and
Illinois want to tax per mile you drive under the same excuse that electric
cars are reducing their tax revenue. California is now investigating taxing
people per mile they drive. They always do these things AFTER an election and
NEVER before. The I-95 interstate federal highway up and down the East Coast is
another experiment where they are tracking cars and how they travel so they can
impose a tax on per mile you drive.
Then you have state pensions in trouble. How to make up the difference? California wants to add a tax to cover state employee pensions. Then you do not even realize that phones and electricity are taxed by federal, state, and local governments. You just never see the breakdown.
Then there are
airfares. In the USA, the number of agencies who have their hands out for taxes
you never see is amazing. They ensure that your ticket is generally anywhere
between a 20% tax to 100% doubling in the price of airfare. This is one reason
why airlines are charging for checked bags and just about anything that use to
be free for if they are not part of the ticket, then they are not taxed. It’s a
bit overwhelming to consider just how many governmental departments and
agencies are directly involved in the nation’s commercial aviation system that
you have to pay for. This long list includes — but is not limited to — the U.S.
Department of Transportation; its subsidiary, the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA); the Transportation Security Administration (TSA); Customs
and Border Protection; Immigration and Customs Enforcement; the Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service; and the National Transportation Safety Board.
Furthermore, commercial airports throughout the United States are operated on
state, county, and city levels, as well as by independent port authorities and
operators. So when you are standing in abusive lines and forced to take your
shoes off in the USA and no other country, remember, you are paying for that
privilege.
Just the very basic
starting fees are:
Domestic Passenger
Ticket Tax: collected for FAA; 7.5% of ticket price
Domestic Flight
Segment Tax: collected for FAA; $4 per segment, defined as “a flight leg
consisting of one takeoff and one landing by a flight”
International Arrival
Tax: collected for FAA; $17.70
International
Departure Tax: collected for FAA; $17.70
September 11th
Security Fee: collected for TSA; $5.60 one-way for flights departing the United
States, but not to exceed $11.20 round-trip
Passenger Facility
Charge: collected for “commercial airports controlled by public agencies”; up
to $4.50 per passenger
The more connections,
the higher the tax. On top of all that, you are charged $200 to change a ticket
and if you do not make the flight, you can be just out and have to buy another
ticket. The airlines will not refund all the taxes included in the ticket. You
will find the mind-blowing travel charges exposed by the Business Travel
Coalition. The average person trying to travel will usually find up to half the
ticket price on domestic flights can be just taxes. Every possible agency is
involved and they all have their fingers in your pocket.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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