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Well I pay about a 20% tip most of the time so I guess I will cut that to 15% to make up for it.Too bad,It sucks for the food sever.....
So because you have to pay an extra 1% your going to take %5 away from your server? That doesn't really make sense.... Maybe you should just eat at home or get fast food if the increase is going to keep you from leaving an adequate tip.
Not a big deal to me really. Yea, no one likes taxes to go up. But if you think about it, if you spend $50 eating out, the additional 1% tax would add up to fifty cents. On a $100 tab, the added 1% tax would be $1.
I think the point is that on a $100 tab, your total tax alone is going to be about $10. Plus tip. I don't mind the tip so much because the server usually earns it, but what involvement did Raleigh have in bringing me my burger and beer?
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I guess much of what Ani referred to doesn't affect me - I don't own a home, so no homeowner's insurance or property taxes...I don't earn enough to be in the bracket where there would be that tax surcharge...we're on a well, so don't pay for water..
As a property owner/landlord, I can tell you absolutely that increases in homeowners' insurance rates and property taxes will get passed on to tenants. If I can't make money on the house, I'm either going to up the rent or sell it out from under the renter (at the end of the lease of course). It's that simple. I'm not running a charity and neither is your landlord.
As a property owner/landlord, I can tell you absolutely that increases in homeowners' insurance rates and property taxes will get passed on to tenants. If I can't make money on the house, I'm either going to up the rent or sell it out from under the renter (at the end of the lease of course). It's that simple. I'm not running a charity and neither is your landlord.
I don't have a landlord. I don't own, I don't rent. The dwelling is owned outright and the owner (a relative) pays the property taxes, which isn't much (it's a mobile home).
But I understand your point, and under normal circumstances, YES, things like that get passed onto tenants. I would expect my rent to go up if my landlord's property taxes went up.
I will have to check that out re: the auto rates. What I had heard is that the state insurance commission has mandated higher liability coverage or something along those lines (can't remember what it was exactly) which would make rates go up. But maybe there was some other decision by a court that made the rates go down, lol.
Thanks so much for posting this, JDL! No, I was not aware of this decrease. I wonder if that prevented the increase that had been discussed earlier this year? Or . . . did the liability requirements increase wh/ thus raised rates - heck - I don't remember the details any longer.
In any case - nice to see the state was looking out for us.
Of the 9.25% total prepared tax that people are paying:
1% of it is the prepared food tax. This is being used in Charlotte to pay for the Convention Center, and through complicated shell games, the arena for the NBA and the Nascar hall of fame. You have to decide if it is worth it or not.
1/2% of the tax is the transit tax. Many people were led to believe that if they voted for this tax, CATS would be building trains for them. The fact of the matter is this tax generates ~$72M/year and CATS is spending over $100M/year just on operations. There won't be more trains coming here. The is proven by the fact that just this year the Charlotte city council and the local MTC both voted to ask the state for permission to increase the transit tax to a full 1%. They were turned down. If this had passed, then you would be playing $9.75% tax to eat out. $8.75% on everything else. They will try again, because there is absolutely no interest in holding the transit agency accountable for the money it is spending. The first time anyone asks this, they are labeled anti-transit and subsequently tar and feathered.
So while the state deserves to be slapped for increasing the sales tax, this is 5.5% of it. The rest comes from the local politicians and they deserve the bigger scrutiny as they continue to act like there are no consequences from spending all this money on projects and yet we are paying upwards of 4% in local taxes because of it. I won't even get into the tax money they handed over to Wachovia, which doesn't even exist anymore, to build that 50 story tower in downtown that nobody needs.
(a bit pissed at the moment because I just wrote out checks for 3 property tax bills to Mecklenburg county)
Time to cross the State Line and do most of the shopping, fueling, eating out, etc in SC. NC is not NY, NJ or DC to be charging so much in taxes and still be a Southern town.
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