So are you mad at having to pay taxes? Actually, I take that back. Are you miffed that you or your business seems to have to pay taxes on some ridiculous things but not so much on other more sensible things? If so, you may be a potential tax reformer and interested in the things that Philadelphia Forward have to say. If not, if you think taxes are just fine where they are, you may also want to contact Philadelphia Forward. I'm sure they'll love the chance to change your mind.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, you may just want to drop things on City Council members from a hot air balloon (possibly that giant balloon at the zoo). The folks over at Philadelphia Forward (Brett Mandel - the least favorite person of the Board of Revision of Taxes), have revamped their Tax Reform Challenge video game to include the new mayor. Once you drop a fax or email on all 17 council members, a whole lot of little Nutter clones attack. Well, not so much attack as pop up from somewhere below the street (the subway? the sewers?).
Click on the picture of the game below to be taken to Philadelphia Forward's website where you can try to beat Milton Street's and Carlos Matos' high scores.
I couldn't do any better than a score of 81 which means I must not be an effective advocate for tax reform. I shouldn't be surprised, my advocacy for a citywide Elvis Presley day hasn't gone anywhere either.
As for this blogger and taxes: at this point, I have little choice about paying the wage tax so complaining about it would be about as useful as yelling at a cloud. I like my neighborhood. My trash gets picked up on time. Cops patrol pretty frequently. I even have single stream recycling. But if I do open a business, I'm considering putting it on an island in the Delaware as soon as I figure out how far out I have to be so that I'm technically in New Jersey. I consider myself more in disagreement with the kinds of taxes that are levied rather than the overall level of taxation. It seems like there is definitely some room for improvement in which taxes are collected, how they are collected and how often they are collected.
Ok, anonymous property tax commenter... the comments are yours to remind us how much is out there in delinquent property taxes.