Wednesday, April 1, 2009

One Hand Giveth

Tax Reduction/Increase: Your next paycheck, if you're not one of the 10% of Californians that are unemployed, should see a slight decrease in payroll taxes, meaning you're taking home more money. It's an incredibly small amount that's more a nod to the working man, but it's somethin'. You can thank the federal government and your children for that little bonus. On the other hand, state sales tax goes up 1% today. For that you can thank the screwed up state government, which needs a good slash and burning. Thanks for pushing people closer to the Internet Sacramento. In any case, if you own anything other than a junker car, you're payroll tax decrease will be offset by the doubling of your vehicle license fee.

New Laptop. A little Friday Night Magic fallout had me buying a refurbished Dell laptop yesterday. If you're in the market for a netbook, something just good enough to surf the web, do some word processing and maybe watch the occasional movie, check out the Dell Inspiron Mini 10. They're about $325 refurbished. Ours will be emerald green and will serve the sole function of running the DCI software. I seriously considered "pink" to potentially avoid theft issues.

4 comments:

  1. You probably should have gone with the pink.

    Vehicle license fees in California are ridiculous. The tag fee here is a flat $25. You might have to pay a few bucks more on your property taxes (vehicles are considered property), but that's it.

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  2. I'm of the opinion that many models of truck should only be sold in Barbie pink, and all lift kits should be pink as well, but that's just because I dislike being able to see UDNER the vehicle next to me from the driver's seat, nothing to do with anything...

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  3. Registration fees in Indiana are the only place I know where they are actually higher, which is why so many people driving there use out of state homes of relatives to register their cars.

    -the Griffin

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  4. In KY, you got hit with a pretty hefty "property tax" payment when you first register the car (even if you own it and move to the state, you essentially pay sales tax on it again), but after that, it's very reasonable. It's almost like some states use the registration fee to cover the administrative costs of registering the vehicle, rather than as a source of income that they can then spend on a ton of BS programs to repay the people who contribute the most to the legislators campaign funds.
    Here in California, our legislators are a bunch of crooks and incompetents (although some of them are quite competent as crooks).

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