How to get your property taxes reduced.

Who hasn’t stop to think about what the local government does with your taxes at the end of the year? After all the “tax brakes” that they get, homeowners still pay a bigger share of the tax bill. When the expenses rise to the point in which they are difficult to pay, some people turn to renting their properties as a resource of income. According to local governments property value is always going up. But, think about it, if the value of your home goes up so the property taxes since they are based on the same increase. If you are paying a mortgage, you most also pay for the local school, city and county taxes. Where are my tax brakes? 

First of all, you, as a homeowner, get to claim the interest you pay for your mortgage in your income tax but it does not offset the increase of the property value which generates a raise of your property taxes. Lets put it this way, if you are paying a low fix percentage of interest in your loan like 7% your mortgage, according to the inflation, will be lower with time but, if the value of your property goes up 3%, you end up paying more at the end of the year in property taxes since it is calculated on the total value of your property. It only benefits you if you want to sell! 

We all know that the money collected from local taxes is used to subsidize schools and increase local government projects, but every time that the government needs money they turn to the homeowner to get it. After the projects get completed, the city most find new “necessary” projects to use the money on because the collection of taxes most be justified. Taxes do not go down due to budget problems. 

The peace of mind that could come from paying a low mortgage banishes when you have to pay your local taxes since it increases your out of pocket expenses. I am only talking about middleclass people who sometimes struggle to get ahead in life. We could complain about it or we could find another, low tax, place to live but it could only turn you in to a nomad. Another resource is to rent your house and move to an apartment because you will not have to worry about the property taxes there. Your taxes will be paid by your rent revenue and will also help you with your new expense. You were paying rent in the form of taxes to the government anyway! 

If you start renting your properties to others you just became a “landlord” to them and moved away from just been a homeowner. Who knows it may just turn in to a good business. We do have recessions and, depending on where you buy your property it could decrease its real value, but real state usually goes up with time. In other words your investment is, sometimes, safer if you are renting it. 

It may sound as a complaint but it is not. It is just an exposition of a problem that may have a solution. I just want to suggest others to think about a way to help the government come up with an idea to fix the problem without thinking about taxes. The local government, for example, could invest in a profitable business to generate the needed revenue. It could create jobs and help the economy at the same time. The local governments, in the other hand, are approaching the collection of resources from another angle. It wants to help you create a business to get you to be able to pay more in taxes. Why not do both? Create businesses and help others create their own. 

If it is a good or a bad suggestion I do not know. For now I think that some homeowners are changing their clothes and way they look to transform into “landlords. Some of them are not doing it because of the money involved but because they also got tired of paying their rent to the government in the form of property taxes.

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The New York City Tax Day Tea Party pt 2. Easily a crowd of over 12000 people in the greatest city in the world. Learn about what is going on in the world. The media doesn’t give you any kind of news anymore. *Conservative leader and writer Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, addresses 12500 at City Hall in Manhattan in one of the nation’s largest and nationally televised 2009 Tea Party rallies.* Google search: End the Fed www.campaignforliberty.com HR 1207

read more about the credit at remax-best-kc.com Find out if you are able to use the new tax credit. Make sense of a complex set of rules that can put money in your pocket. Search for a new Kansas City home at http

The need for tax shifting – lowering income taxes while raising taxes on environmentally destructive activities – in order to get the market to tell the truth has been widely endorsed by economists. The basic idea is to establish a tax that reflects the indirect costs to society of an economic activity. For example, a tax on coal would incorporate the increased health care costs associated with breathing polluted air, the costs of damage from acid rain, and the costs of climate disruption.

Nine countries in Western Europe have already begun the process of tax shifting, known as environmental tax reform. The amount of revenue shifted thus far is small, just a few percent. But enough experience has been gained to know that it works.

Among the activities taxed in Europe are carbon emissions, emissions of heavy metals, and the generation of garbage (so-called landfill taxes). The Nordic countries, led by Sweden, pioneered tax shifting at the beginning of the 1990s. By 1999 a second wave of tax shifting was under way, this one including the larger economies of Germany, France, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Tax shifting does not change the level of taxes, only their composition. One of the better known changes was a four-year plan adopted in Germany in 1999 to shift taxes from labor to energy. By 2001, this had lowered fuel use by 5 percent. A tax on carbon emissions adopted in Finland in 1990 lowered emissions there 7 percent by 1998.

Environmental tax reform is spreading, with the reform process now under way in Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The United States imposed a stiff tax on chlorofluorocarbons to phase them out in accordance with the Montreal Protocol of 1987. At the local level, the city of Victoria, British Columbia, adopted a trash tax of $1.20 per bag of garbage, reducing its daily trash flow 18 percent within one year.

One of the newer taxes gaining in popularity is the so-called congestion tax. City governments are turning to a tax on vehicles picture of urban traffic entering the city, or at least the inner part of the city where traffic congestion is most serious. In London, where the average speed of an automobile was 9 miles per hour – about the same as a horse-drawn carriage – a congestion tax was adopted in early 2003. The $8 charge on all motorists driving into the center of the city between 7am and 6:30pm immediately reduced the number of vehicles by 24 percent, permitting traffic to flow more freely while cutting pollution and noise.

Environmental tax shifting usually brings a double dividend. In reducing taxes on income – in effect, taxes on labor – labor becomes less costly, creating additional jobs while protecting the environment. This was the principal motivation in the German four-year shift of taxes from income to energy. The shift from fossil fuels to more energy-efficient technologies and to renewable sources of energy reduces carbon emissions and represents a shift to more labor-intensive industries. By lowering the air pollution from smokestacks and tailpipes, it also reduces respiratory illnesses, such as asthma and emphysema, and health care costs – a triple dividend.

When it comes to reflecting the value of nature’s services, ecologists can, for example, calculate the values of services that a forest in a given location provides. Once picture of logging operation these are determined, they can be incorporated into the price of trees as a stumpage tax of the sort that Bulgaria and Lithuania have adopted. Anyone wishing to cut a tree would have to pay a tax equal to the value of the services provided by that tree. The market would then be telling the truth. The effect of this would be to reduce tree cutting, since forest services may be worth several times as much as the timber, and to encourage wood and paper recycling.

Some 2,500 economists, including eight Nobel Prize winners in economics, have endorsed the concept of tax shifts. Former Harvard economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw, who was nominated to be Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors in early 2003, wrote in Fortune magazine: “Cutting income taxes while increasing gasoline taxes would lead to more rapid economic growth, less traffic congestion, safer roads, and reduced risk of global warming – all without jeopardizing long-term fiscal solvency. This may be the closest thing to a free lunch that economics has to offer.” Mankiw could also have added that it would reduce the military expenditures associated with ensuring access to Middle Eastern oil.

The Economist has recognized the advantage of environmental tax shifting and endorses it strongly: “On environmental grounds, never mind energy security, America taxes gasoline too lightly. Better than a one-off increase, a politically more feasible idea, and desirable in its own terms, would be a long-term plan to shift taxes from incomes to emissions of carbon.” In Europe and the United States, polls indicate that at least 70 percent of voters support environmental tax reform once it is explained to them.

Subsidies, which are essentially “negative taxes,” also must be reformed. Each year the world’s taxpayers underwrite $700 billion of subsidies for environmentally destructive activities, picture of oil rig such as burning fossil fuels, over-pumping aquifers, clear-cutting forests, and overfishing. A 1997 Earth Council study, Subsidizing Unsustainable Development, observes that “there is something unbelievable about the world spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to subsidize its own destruction.”

Subsidies are not inherently bad. Many technologies and industries were born of government subsidies. Jet aircraft were developed with military R&D expenditures, leading to modern commercial airliners. The Internet was a result of publicly funded efforts to establish links between computers in government laboratories and research institutes. And the combination of the federal tax incentive and a robust state tax incentive in California gave birth to the modern wind power industry.

But just as there is a need for tax shifting, there is also a need for subsidy shifting. A world facing the prospect of economically disruptive climate change, for example, can no longer justify subsidies to expand the burning of coal and oil. Shifting these subsidies to the development of climate – benign energy sources such as wind power, solar power, and geothermal power is the key to stabilizing the earth’s climate. Shifting subsidies from road construction to rail construction could increase mobility in many situations while reducing carbon emissions.

In a troubled world economy facing fiscal deficits at all levels of government, exploiting tax and subsidy shifts with their double and triple dividends can help balance the books and save the environment. Tax and subsidy shifting promise both gains in economic efficiency and reductions in environmental destruction, a win-win situation.

History judges political leaders by whether they respond to the great issues of their time. For today’s leaders, that issue is how to deflate the world’s bubble economy before it bursts. This bubble threatens the future of everyone, rich and poor alike. It challenges us to restructure the global economy, to build an eco-economy.

The choice is ours – yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside over a global bubble economy that keeps expanding until it bursts, leading to economic decline. Or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that stabilizes population, eradicates poverty, and stabilizes climate. Historians will record the choice, but it is ours to make

Pascalle Heynen

Like other cities across the nation, the city of Springfield Missouri is asking its voters whether or not the city should increase its sales tax to help raise funds. In Springfield’s case it is the pension fund for police officers and fire fighters that they want to increase. The tax was officially proposed to the city council by the City Manager Greg Burris and is only a single cent raise over the current rate.

Many of the Springfield citizens wonder why the city’s budget cannot just be re-worked to make the funding possible. Some have suggested cutting funding for less needed programs to find the money. Unfortunately, city officials say that even if they were to re-work the city budget, the pension fund would still fall short and that shortage would be effective for retirees within the next five years.

Nobody wants to see the police officers and fire fighters have their pensions reduced or cut, but finding the money to keep that fund well stocked has proven to be a bit of a problem because Springfield citizens don’t want their sales tax raised either. Currently Springfield has one of the lowest tax rates in the state. The single cent increase would not affect the competitive rates that Springfield has enjoyed for so long.

According to the official Springfield website, the single cent tax increase would mean one dollar in liability for every one hundred dollars in taxable purchases over the course of five years, or until the pension becomes fully funded again. If the pension refills before the five years has passed the one cent increase in taxes will stop.

One of the major questions Springfield residents are asking is why the firefighters and police officers aren’t paying into Social Security and then allowing that to supplement their pension plans. As it turns out, in the 1940s, the residents of Springfield voted in the self-funded pension plan to reduce the burden on the Social Security fund. Believe it or not, it is a common practice for public employees to give up their social security in exchange for a pension.

Officially the approval of the sales tax is in the hands of Springfield’s voters. Some are all for the sales tax while others are completely against it, insisting that they already pay too much in taxes. Some residents do not believe that the fund is actually in trouble. Still others say that a five year period is too short and that the sales tax should stretch over twenty years—that it is better to over fund the pension plan than to run the risk of it running low again.

As a resident of Springfield, what is your take on this? Would you mind if the sales tax was raised by one penny? Do you think that the taxes in Springfield are already too high? Do you think that the pensions of public servants are too high? These are the questions you should ask yourself as you decide which way you are going to vote on your ballot.

For more information on Springfield, Missouri, visit http://www.springfieldmicroblog.com and http://www.missourimicroblog.com.

Here is Cathedral City Business Lawyer Sebastian Gibson’s Top Ten:

1. Shop at Neiman Marcus.

 

2. Wear your hair in a bee hive.

 

3. If you’re doing well, cite the business polls. If you’re not, ignore the business polls.

 

4. Say, “you betcha” a lot.

 

5. Fire any troopers who give you trouble.

 

6. Wear expensive clothes.

 

7. Don’t even try to compete against someone smarter than you.

 

8. Look adorable.

 

9. Try to hire a lookalike to make skits about you for TV that show how smart you are.

 

10. Run for Mayor of the smallest town you can find and use that post as a springboard to big things.

 

Now here is everything (well, almost everything) you need to know in business about environmental, international law, election and campaign law, consumer law, class actions, constitutional, internet, publishing, advertising, media, publicity and privacy rights, employment law, estate planning, wills, trusts, water law, agricultural, insurance law, bad faith, psychologist and psychotherapist defense, education law and child accidents.

You can also find all you need to know (well, mostly) in business about personal injury, car accidents, brain damage, wrongful deaths, real estate, landlord-tenant, homeowners association law, construction, patents, trademarks, corporations, entertainment law, advertising, copyrights, food and wine, and hotel and restaurant law and litigation by searching for those subjects and adding the words Cathedral City business lawyer or Cathedral City business attorney to your search terms and looking for other articles by Sebastian Gibson.

 

You can also learn more about any of these business areas of law and how we can assist you as Cathedral City business attorneys, or as lawyers in any city, by calling the Law Offices of R. Sebastian Gibson at any of the numbers which can be found on our website at http://www.SebastianGibsonLaw.com  .

 

1. Environmental and Toxic Tort Law in Cathedral City – With multi-billion dollar energy companies spending more money to confuse the public on the threat posed by global warming than on research into alternative forms of energy, it will take all of us to sort fact from fiction and solve the growing problem of global warming. An additional danger to all of us comes from exposure to toxic materials in our daily lives from tainted food, to contaminated ground water, to dangerous viruses in the public and in hospitals to lead and mercury poisoning. If you experience unusual symptoms that a doctor can’t explain, you may have been exposed to a toxic substance and have a toxic tort claim that should be evaluated by us or another qualified Cathedral City environmental attorney.

 

2. Cathedral City International, Shipping and Maritime Law – A Cathedral City international attorney with years of international legal education and experience such as you’ll find at our Cathedral City law firm, can provide you with a wealth of practical knowledge and the ability to find answers to your international law questions. It is to your advantage to also have a Cathedral City international lawyer working in cooperation with foreign counsel in other jurisdictions to ensure that the most cost-effective avenues are pursued to resolve your legal matter. However, many international matters can be resolved with letters between Cathedral City international lawyers and foreign lawyers, and international mediations and arbitrations can also be utilized. If you have been injured on a ship or an oil rig you have rights under the Jones Act to be compensated for your injuries, medical treatment, past and future wage loss and care.

 

3. Cathedral City Election and Campaign Finance Law – If you are considering running for political office or have already done so and are facing campaign finance legal issues, the time to hire a Cathedral City election attorney with election law knowledge is at the first possible opportunity before you get into hot water that can sink your campaign or put your political career into jeopardy.

 

4. Cathedral City Consumer Law and Class Actions – If you have paid for an item but have not received it, been promised an action or service that has not come to fruition or are considering ordering services or signing any type of agreement, the time to hire a Cathedral City consumer lawyer is immediately in order to avoid being scammed, or defrauded. A Cathedral City consumer attorney’s letter drafted forcefully but professionally will obtain the desired result, products or services in a good percentage of cases. Whether you ordered gold bars but did not receive them, were told that your car would be paid off when you traded it in on a new one or were promised that a pool would be completed in your back yard, a Cathedral City consumer attorney can and should be hired for a modest fee to write a letter on your behalf and demand the required action, products or services. If you think you are just one of many who have been scammed or defrauded in some way, you may have a class action.

 

5. Constitutional, Publishing and Publicity and Privacy Rights, Internet Law, Advertising and Media Law in Cathedral City – Defamation includes both libel and slander. Anyone in the media or publishing or broadcast world or with a web site is at risk of a lawsuit for claims of defamation or false advertising However, constitutional law questions also arise in civil rights discrimination cases, discrimination in employment and a wide variety of other legal matters. If you have been disenfranchised or your constitutional rights abused in any matter or if you have been accused of abusing the rights of others, contact a Cathedral City constitutional lawyer as soon as it occurs. If others seek to profit with the use of your name or image you also have a claim for damages.

 

6. Employment Law in Cathedral City – It may seem silly to think you should hire a Cathedral City employment attorney whenever you are considering firing an employee, but it has come to that. However, a consultation with a good Cathedral City employment law firm can provide you with the advice of how to handle your employee relations both immediately and in the future as you either seek to cut costs or get rid of a problematic employee. If you have been sued or threatened with a suit, or are being scammed by an employee, consult a Cathedral City employment lawyer immediately.

 

7. Cathedral City Estate Planning, Wills and Trusts – The current estate tax in 2008 affects only people who die with an estate in excess of two million dollars. In 2009, that amount will increase to three and a half million dollars and in 2010, the estate tax is repealed. That’s the good news. If, however, the estate tax repeal is not extended by 2011, the estate tax will kick in again. The worse news is that in 2011, if the estate tax repeal is not extended, the estate tax will kick in at one million dollars. The current federal estate tax rate is a whopping 47 percent. That stays the same in 2009. But other current provisions in the tax code change or end in 2010. In light of this, it is more important than ever to hire a Cathedral City estate planning lawyer to draft your will and evaluate the need for a living trust to avoid probate fees ensure your estate goes to the beneficiaries you want it to go to. If you don’t have a will or trust at death, the state will determine who gets your estate, but it will usually be your spouse and children, of if you have none, your closest relatives.

 

8. Water, Agricultural and Natural Resource Law in Cathedral City – It is hoped by American farmers and meat producers that the new Country of Origin Labeling Law taking effect in groceries will cause food shoppers to seek meat and produce from the U.S. over food items from other countries. But it is the water shortage in California that has California farmers faced with dire consequences. In 2008, the California Governor formed a Water Bank to stave off mandatory water rationing, but if California has another dry winter, or more fires that draw upon California’s precious water reserves, or if the state legislature does not address the state’s delta environmental problems and expand the state’s water works, with a bill that has been tied up while the legislators haggled over a budget, rationing across the state could become a reality. If you have a water or agricultural issue, the time to call a Cathedral City agricultural lawyer with knowledge in this areas is before the issue becomes critical.

 

9. Insurance Law, Bad Faith, Psychologist, Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist Defense in Cathedral City – As insurance companies feel the pain of the stock market crash and face the reality of the value of their own investments decreasing, we expect to see insurance companies delaying settlements, and flirting with violations of the insurance bad faith statutes. As the public becomes more and more depressed with the sinking stock market, loss of jobs, reduced income and less enjoyment out of life, we also see the likelihood of greater use of psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists. When claims are made against these professionals without justification, our Cathedral City law firm stands ready to defend them

 

10. Cathedral City Education Law and Child Accidents – A recent court ruling in California has given temporary relief to parents homeschooling their children. However, we still expect further court rulings to make guidelines that will govern when or under what circumstances homeschooling of children will be permitted in California. Children, as any parent knows, can be injured any time, anywhere. What should not happen is any injury to a child that is the result of the negligence of another. To that end, our Cathedral City personal injury lawyers championed protection for children and convinced at least one court and encouraged other personal injury attorneys to do the same, to uphold a new tort for negligent endangerment of a child.

 

If you have a legal matter in Cathedral City, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indian Wells, Rancho Mirage, Indio, La Quinta, Coachella, Desert Hot Springs, Thermal, Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms or anywhere in the Coachella Valley, our Cathedral City law firm has the knowledge and resources to be your Cathedral City Lawyers and your Cathedral City Attorneys. Be sure to hire a Coachella Valley law firm with experience in Personal Injury, Car Accidents, Drownings, Brain Damage, Catastrophic Injuries, Wrongful Death, Business, Real Estate and Landlord Tenant Law, Homeowner Association Law, Construction, Trademarks, Patents, Corporations, Entertainment, Sports Law, Marketing, Advertising, Media, and Copyright Law, and who will endeavor to ensure that your rights are properly represented.

 

Additionally, if you have a legal matter which involves Environmental and Toxic Tort Law, Litigation, International, Shipping and Maritime Law, Employment, Election and Campaign Finance Law, Consumer Law and Class Actions, Constitutional, Publishing, Publicity, Privacy Rights, Internet Law, Advertising and Media Law, Food and Wine Law, Hotel and Restaurant Law, Estate Planning, Wills and Trusts, Water, Agricultural and Natural Resource Law, Insurance Law, Bad Faith and Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist Defense, Education Law or a Child Accident in Cathedral City or anywhere in Southern California, call the Law Offices of R. Sebastian Gibson, or visit our website at http://www.SebastianGibsonLaw.com  and learn how a Cathedral City attorney from our offices can assist you.