A Real Problem

 

February 12, 2025

 

There is talk in the Missouri legislature about eliminating the capital gains tax. Let’s move on from the part where wealthy people and corporations would pay less tax while the state already has a huge budget problem; and let’s not concern ourselves with the fact that separate legislation is being floated that would give the General Assembly the power to tax services that ordinary people use: HVAC work, lawn care, dog grooming…I hope that doesn’t include haircuts. 

 

No, the real losers in the deal will be the Real Estate brokers, who routinely try to talk people into buying more expensive houses when they sell their current ones. “You don’t want to pay that Capital Gains tax,” they say, as if paying the tax is worse than paying a ton of interest over the next 15-30 years on the more expensive home that you don’t need. Now what leverage will they use in order to upsell?

 

I wonder if Missouri realtors will rally to protect their  interests?

 

 

 

Taxing Our Credulity

 

June 17, 2024

 

In a warm-hearted effort to help people who don’t pay tax on their car purchases, thereby driving around with expired tags, the city of St. Louis will now lend them the money to pay the tax.

“They probably can’t afford it,” says the city, blithely disregarding the many owners of higher-end cars with expired paper tags. “So, we’ll lend them the money for the tax.” That’s right—now they’re going to “lend” money to people who clearly have no scruples about paying for things in the first place.

But that’s not even why I’m writing this. The sentence that caught my eye was, “Ultimately, officials say, it will make the streets safer for everyone.” (Post-Dispatch, June 16, 2024)

 

I hate to break it to the officials, but the tags aren’t making the streets unsafe—unless you count distracted drivers craning their necks to see how old the paper license plate is.

 

 

Nailing Down the Solution

 

 

March 12, 2024

 

A major source of annoyance for many people in the St. Louis region is that car buyers will often drive with temporary tags long after the tags have expired. Not a big deal, except that that means that the car buyers haven’t paid taxes on their cars.

 

To the tax-paying citizens of the region, these scofflaws epitomize What’s Wrong with the World Today—no personal responsibility—and besides, We Had to Pay, So Why Don’t You?

 

Part of the problem is that, when drivers are zooming down the road, the paper temporary plates, unsecured at the bottom, flap around so that there’s no way to tell when they expired. So police can’t stop them for expired plates, because who can tell?

 

I bent my powerful mind to the problem and concluded that, if car sellers were required to affix the bottom of the temporary plates to the car, they wouldn’t flap around. Thus, more people would be ticketed and presumably pay those back taxes.

 

Shall we try it?