Pet tax is where your city/state requires you to pay taxes for having a pet; own a pet, pay a tax. I suspect it will not be long before the child tax comes along; Have a child, register your child, and pay $25/yr for your child, obviously per child. Welcome to Washington State home of ridiculous housing costs. (due to bogus market conditions, and greed) and pet taxes, not only that, you also pay pet fees whenever you choose apartment living because housing is so expensive, and a home is for the higher class.....
In NZ we have to license our dog every year and they're looking at introducing it for cats too. Technically the license pays for "animal control" who pick up strays etc. I suspect the majority of the licence fee is spent resolving problems with unlicensed dogs. You get a discount if you've passed their ridiculous multichoice "responsible owner" test and if your dog is neutered. Or maybe you pay a premium if you haven't done the test and your dog is entire... all depends on how you look at it. what are the fees for apartment living - is that charged by the State/local government or by the building's management?
I am not sure how much govt is involved in apartment fees (if any at all) I know in this area, the avg seems to be 20-$25 per pet. So we pay pet taxes because of the irresponsible... I can see that; I pay taxes all the time so the irresponsible can keep going. I pay for kids to go to school; I pay for for people to sit at home on the welfare system, and I am certain we pay for stuff we have no clue on what we are paying for.... Then wake up the next day to find a "pet tax" sticker stuck on my door. Ok, we found out you have pets, time to pay up.... and I never knew there was any such taxes because you own pets.... no wonder why people cant save for retirement... We simply pay taxes on issues that never get resolved... getting hit with taxes just means I have to cut back on something else...taxes are not an economy booster, it is only a drain because I am not buying something else that would be more important to the economy then this...
The real question is whether we are at the tipping point yet here in the U.S. For decades, we have been seeing the number of "makers" in the country declining, while the number of "takers" are growing. Someone once noted that it is the end of a democracy when the "takers" become the majority of voters and realize that they can use government legislation to take more and more from the fewer and fewer people who actually create wealth. Obama has been on an 8-year sprint to add as many takers to the population mix as possible. Mostly, he has done it by demonizing "greedy" businesses and workers for wanting to keep their money and assets instead of giving it to him to spend, bloating the government workforce to dole out more benefits, loosening welfare and other entitlement requirements, and opening the doors wide to illegal immigrants who come here and immediately begin sucking up free services. When he was re-elected in 2012, despite his horrid performance and failures in just about every aspect of his presidency, some of us began to fear that we have, in fact, hit the tipping point and the takers now have a majority of the electorate. If the corrupt Clinton political sleaze machine wins the election in November, it will be because of the takers and that will be one more scary data point in this regard... By the way, here in RI, they force us to buy a dog license (which is nothing more than a tax, of course) but that does not exist for cats. I suspect that apartment owners who allow pets (few and far between, in my limited experience) charge a premium for this.
The government is going broke... They need tax revenue from anything they can come up with. Last summer I was on a road that lead to a park (I didn't know there was a park down there), I got a ticket for being in a"park after dark"... which now I know is defined as any time after 30 minutes before sunset. Long story short, is I figured it would be like a $20 ticket or something. Nope... $1,100 ticket for a first time offense. I fought the ticket and won after I saw how much it was. But this is how the ticket fees were broken down: $250 to the city (first time infraction offense for being in a park after dark) $825 to the state of California $25 court fee Technically I was "across the street from a park around sunset"... which is why I won in court. But let's forget about that for a minute... the state of California needed a new revenue stream, so any misdemeanor or infraction that a city gives, the state collects $33 per $10 for themselves as of a couple years ago. So yeah... pet tax is because the states are broke.
Wow, that is unbelievable! Despite being on the opposite side of the country in RI, I, too, have seen California's financial desperation. Their tax agency sent one of my businesses a questionnaire to determine if we owed state sales tax on sales made to their citizens. I think that the agency was called the Tax Fairness Agency or something like that. My attorney and I had a good laugh over it as I have no presence or tie to California and, therefore, no need to even reply to them. They tried to engage with us a few times and finally gave up but it was obvious how desperate they were. Not that RI is any more fiscally responsible, of course.
I feel bad for people doing something like fishing where they caught a couple fish the wrong size or something. It's a $1000 fine per fish... so let's say someone didn't really know and caught 3 fish the wrong size. $3,000 for the base, then the state of California adds their $33 per $10, so that's an extra $9,900... plus the $25 court fee. $12,925 ticket if you had a valid fishing license, but caught 3 fish the wrong size. lol
This infuriates me. Idiots. Those laws are created by the same type of morons who believe an electric car is more efficient than its gasoline counterpart. Sure, if you're stupid enough to believe the electricity is produced by your garage wall.
You want to know what is more ironic? boats coming in daily with loads and loads of fish... however, if you are an individual, then they feel that you will deplete all the fish from everyone to enjoy, but tonnage of fish from boats will not do this? and Wa is on that list...fish with out lic, then you get fined, catch the wrong fish, fined, catch a fish in the wrong area, get another fine; sitting at the dock watching boat loads of fish come in = $$$ and that is priceless my friend.... I never heard of Pet Rent until I was around 45 years old... I never heard of pet tax until now, and I am around 50... pet fees + pet taxes = more govt = more taxes. Here is something unrelated: I got my pink slip today... Want to pay more rent? Want to pay more taxes? Just move to Washington.... Goodbye Washington.... I could not be more happier...
I don't eat fish and I really don't understand fishing so I'm a complete outsider on this but we have our fish size limits but the f'ing raping trawlers are allowed smaller fish than the guy slinging a line from his boat. Makes no sense whatsoever! What's good is that we're starting to introduce areas where people can fish but commercial boats have to stay out and that seems wise from a stock management point of view.
I cant say that I favor or dis-favor fish. I am not really a fish person, however if it is on my plate ready to go, then I suppose I would eat it, in other words if the fish dried up over night, then I most likely would not miss them at all.... however, if chickens vanish, we just may have a problem, in all honesty, you do not need fish, chicken, or burgers in order to survive, its a personal choice.... You could live on mashed potatoes if that is your thing....
Wow, I am sorry to hear this, though it sounds like you are really ready to move on. Where are you thinking of heading to?
Thinking of setting up base camp in TN... I am already looking at land, and property is cheap. from there, I may look for something local, but unlikely... otherwise, I start nation-wide job search again; at the very least, if I get pink slip in the future, then I will have property to return too; may have to hire a local to look over the property when I am gone or something.... I am already packing; my rent is good until the end of the month, and I probably have at least 1-2 months worth of food scattered here and there.... Each day I do a little bit of packing this, and that... and when I leave Washington, then the world can have whatever I decide not to take with me....
Well, good luck with all of this. My wife's twin brother has lived in TN for quite some time and seems to really like it there. I have never been to his place, but it is in a very rural place which most of TN appears to be. I have been to Nashville and Memphis on business and they seemed like really nice places. The people were very friendly.
I have been reading more and more articles about people--millenials in particular--who are moving elsewhere because of high costs of living and high taxes. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-migration-20150101-story.html What is most interesting is that one-fourth to one-third of California's population is foreign-born immigrants. That's over 10 million immigrants competing for scarce housing, which only pushes costs higher. Look at real estate prices in San Francisco where a modest 2 or 3 bedroom home costs $700,000 or more. And most of the people buying those ridiculously overpriced homes are using borrowed money and think somebody else will come along later and pay even more than they did.
The higher ups want you to think there is always a housing shortage so they can keep rent high... ie: supply and demand... So unless there is a rush of people all at once, then I doubt there is any housing shortages... People are entering, and leaving states all the time; When I got here, I never saw any evidence there was any type of housing shortage, however, I disliked the high rent right off the bat.... In TN, I can get 3 acre property for $10-$12k (in some places, normally out in the country) but if you look for that same 3 acres in Washington, then forget about it; unless you have very deep pockets into the 100s of thousands, then you will never find such prime land; as some cities are just over populated, and land is not created anymore, and that alone increases the cost of property when you are so close to a dense population, and as you mentioned, these $300k-$500k homes would cost a fraction in other states....not only that, most can not afford these high cost homes that really have no value, and they are simply forced into apartments like cattle; around here, it seems like there is apartments on every block; even when you get out into the country, housing/land does not decrease in value all that much; Those in control of high housing costs are the govt/rich, and both always want more money.... It is not that homes are expensive; It is the land that the home sits on.... and it does not make sense to have property that is so expensive that the poor or middle class can not afford housing; it defeats the purpose, and is counter roductive, after all, the poor, and middle class feed the govt and the rich alike. The rich and powerful can not wipe their own ass unless the poor or middle class gives them the toilet paper to do so.
Hmm, I am in WA and so far I don't need to license my pet rock. So, which law requires pets to be licensed? If they find out about my pet, I will just throw it in one of the creeks in my back yard.
Wow, you had better be careful. The PETA people will be running naked ladies past your house if you abuse your pet like that.
Again it's just a stark example of what the liberal policies can do to a state (i.e. destroy the very fabric of it). Take any democrat party run state and you'll see over-taxation, kuku-banana policies, high property cost, expensive toll roads, growing crime rate and drug abuse, openness to illegal immigration and more. I am glad you're planning to move. It's been long overdue. Sooner or later they will run out of other people's money making their local economies go down in a hurry.
What the lamestream press carefully avoids to mention is that just about all of the states or cities in economic trouble are run by very liberal governments. As Margaret Thatcher so succinctly noted about socialism, "Eventually, you run out of other people's money." Once the liberals chase out all of the "makers" with higher and higher taxation and fees, they are left with only "takers" who have no wealth to steal from. Then they complain about people not paying their "fair share."