Posted on 09/08/2013 5:12:21 AM PDT by maddog55
An Easton, Pa. man, frustrated over property taxes, visited the local tax office and paid in dollar bills -- all $7,143 of it. One bill at a time. Local news reports identify the man as Robert Fernandes of Forks Township. The scene, posted on YouTube, has generated more than 15,600 views -- in less than a week. In the video, Fernandes carries a duffel bag filled with bundled bills, which he proceeds to stack on a counter. He brings doughnuts, offered to "anyone who is inconvenienced here today." The tax collector tells Fernandes his protest should probably be directed elsewhere, toward the school board, maybe, which is in charge of setting property tax rates. "I'm not doing this to make anybody's life more difficult," Fernandes tells the collector. "Unfortunately, I wish the same could be said, you know, for me and many others whose lives are more difficult for having to pay property taxes."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Better video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPRGblJTPRE
I hate property taxes with a passion. I have no mortgage on my house but I still have to pay rent to the government in the form of property taxes. Why should I have to pay taxes on something just because I own it?
The tax collector can stick it for telling the citizen to take his protest elsewhere. The citizen is delivering legal tender.
The tax collector is lucky that it is not all in pennies.
On a very serious note here, I think that more and more people across the ‘Fruited Plain’ have decided that property taxes need to go into the trash can of history.
These ‘taxes’ are probably the most misused and confiscatory of all taxes. They go after those who have the fortune or possibly mis-fortune to own something that someone else has decided is worthy of being taxed. Land, houses even automobiles.
And the most arrogantly misused portion of these ‘property taxes’ is that if you don’t pay them these ‘bureaucratic crooks’ will steal or confiscate your property and sell it for pennies on the dollar just to get the ‘taxes’ they say you owe them. Once again just for having the privilege of owning something.
Land of the ‘Free’ home of the brace... I’m sorry to say it hasn’t been very free for a long time now.
It’s also time to stop this misuse of power by the Government too.
Of all the taxes I pay, property taxes bother me the least although we never sent a single one of our 11 kids to public school. Property tax dollars I can see in action. We have a top notch police force who keeps our town safe, well plowed, well paved streets, and a highly rated school district who keeps our property values high. During their school days my kids got their non religious text books, and the big kids got busses to their high schools.
Compare that to my state and federal income tax dollars. I get nothing from them.
My thoughts as well. Perhaps the answer is that we really don't absolutely own it! Our possession of it is ultimately at the whim of an insatiable government.
If anything, a property tax should be of a non-opressively nominal amount. Or, a pay-for-public-services-as-used system.
I would have paid in pennies.
A Hispanic friend’s mother lives in California in an 800 square foot house. He says she pays $10,000/ year in tax. That’s more than I ever paid on a mortgage in Florida. My taxes have gone up every year that I’ve owned a house. At my last house they went from $500/yr to $1650/yr in eight years. I wish I could get that kind of return on an investment.
Indeed, but the pennies are probably not worth whatever copper is in them.
To add to that injury, they decide what your house is worth, even if you have no intention of selling it, and tax you on what some fool might pay for it if it was on the market.
The most your home should be taxed on is what you paid for it.
No one “owns” property. You can only keep it if all the government entities and your Home Owners Association are paid off every year...a sobering fact when you are paying off your mortgage.
The story I got in grade school was that the big difference between the systems governing the US and USSR was the private ownership of land. With property taxes approaching 10% in some areas of the US, the truth is, that there is virtually no difference. If you want to find out who REALLY owns your property, just don’t pay taxes on it for a bit.
The tax collector tells Fernandes his protest should probably be directed elsewhere, toward the school board, maybe, which is in charge of setting property tax rates.
Everyone should do what this man did.
In the time it took the clerk the do all the b**ching about the job she should have done, she could have been well into counting the bills.
Many people are sick and tired of being raped by property taxes; much of it to finance OTHER people’s children so-called ‘education’. You want to send your children to public school, then you pay for it. I’m tired of being extorted by school unions.
The tax collector should quit whining...I wouldn’t provided donuts, and I wouldn’t have been in an apologetic mood.
I paid 390, currently worth about 220.
Very little copper in pennies thes days. Mostly zinc with a thin copper cladding.
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