As many know, a heated battle has been raging for several years now between California, New York, & New Jersey for the coveted title of worst Berkley’n state in the country to live in. Until now, there’s been no clear winner as the experience depended on your personal situation. For example, if you’re into having a nice home, New Jersey would do the best job of torturing you with its outrageous property taxes. Anyway, the political leaders of California were well aware of this ambiguity and decided to settle the score once and for all.
Effective November 1st, 2009 all California state income tax withholdings have been increased 10%. Although the rate hasn’t formally been increased yet, the strategy is pretty obvious…first, find a way to get your hands on the money then find a way to not give it back which is relatively straight forward, just issue IOU’s that never get funded.
If you’re thinking Californians can just reduce their withholdings to offset the hit, think again. I wound up owing a minuscule amount a few years ago, something like $250, and the California franchise tax board used the opportunity to demand that I start paying quarterly which I didn’t do as I’m one of those antiquated throw backs that actually works hard at his job leaving little time for other stuff. Anyway, I wound up having to pay a penalty for non compliance that was about twenty times more than the interest the state missed out on.
I know several people that got the exact same shake down so this is just a matter of disparate times driving disparate measures and it can only get worse as nothing is being done to resolve the root causes of our problems….tons of illegal aliens burdening our education, judicial, & healthcare systems…way too many government employees making way too much money…way too much restriction on commerce abstemiously to help the environment or the kids but really just to siphon money from the system into the pockets of select individuals…etc, etc, etc.
We raised our state sales tax rate on April 1st by 10% to 12% depending on the county…the range is now 8.75% to 10.25% and we nearly doubled our vehicle license fee back in May.
I was born and raised in California...my family, friends, home, & job are all here so moving would be a very costly undertaking both in a tangible and intangible sense but I really don't know how much more of this I can take.
If times were tough due to some sort of natural disaster, I’d have no problem rising to the occasion and giving 100% to resolve the problems but all of our suffering is totally intentional…it’s all the result of greedy, selfish people just trashing my state for personnel, short term gains.
I don't know what else to say...it's totally, totally unbelievable here.
