Personal Property taxes

When I lived with my parents in Chicago, my Dad got a "personal property tax" bill from Crook County. He tore it up and threw it away. Never paid. No one I ever heard of ever paid.

When I had my body shop in Barrington, Illinois, I got a notice from Cuba Township (Lake County) to fill out their form listing all my tools and such and send them money based on their evaluation of the value of the equipment I had either gotten when I bought the shop, or paid tax on when I bought it myself. I threw the forms away as my Dad did.

Cuba Township was a bit more insistent - some clerk called to see if I had received their letter. I told them "no", and they sent a second copy, which also went into the shitcan.

Now that I live in Wisconsin, I discovered that "Personal Property Tax" exists here, too. It is levied on businesses only, at least. In Crook County, they expected everyone to pay it, even if no one (intelligent) did.

Talk about a regressive tax - you should pay the gov't. yearly "rent" on equipment you paid sales tax on, using money you paid income tax on, for the privilege of being allowed to employ people who will pay taxes, and produce merchandise that will ultimately also be taxed, and hopefully make a profit that also will be taxed. Of course, we all have to pay "property taxes" on our homes and farms, so this is not so unexpected. At least, here, there are no tax inspectors going door-to-door, as I have heard of in other states, such as Indiana...

I wonder how much it costs Wisconsin to keep all the records that this antiproductive tax requires, and how much in lost productivity it costs Wisconsin manufacturers to fill all the forms out.

 Another thing we ought to encourage the Tea Party to tackle. Government should live on some small percentage of the gross profit of the governed area, and nothing else. No fees, surcharges, special taxes, tariffs, nothing. Just a fixed percentage of the economy. If the economy suffers, the government should not be exempt from the suffering, especially since a sick economy is usually the direct result of governmental meddling at some level.