Taxes

Smoke and Mirrors

I know that I tackled this one 16 years ago, but after eighteen years of running this blog, there are very few topics that I haven’t mentioned. The left loves to claim that Clinton ran a budget surplus when he was President. That is false. The national debt actually went up every single year that he was President. The reason that they can claim this, is the money was moved from one account to the other.

Let me explain:

Let’s say that your wife is angry that you are spending all of your money on guns and booze, and is afraid that you are maxing out the credit cards. You show her the bank statements from the checking account, and low and behold, your balance is larger now than it was a year ago: “See?” you say, “We have a positive cash flow.”

But what you didn’t show your wife was that the only reason your checking account is larger is that you borrowed the money from the kids’ college fund. It’s cool, your kids are only 8 and 6 years old. You have more than a decade to pay yourself back. It will be fine. It doesn’t count as debt, because you owe it to yourself.

That’s going to cost you later, because your wife is going to be pissed when she gets ready to send the crotch critters off to college, but that’s a problem for future you to deal with.

Well, that is exactly what the government did. They took the money from the Social Security Trust fund and used that money to cover the deficit. Every administration since 1983 has used Social Security surpluses to mask deficits elsewhere.

Politicians love the unified budget because it lets them:

  • Spend more
  • Claim fiscal discipline
  • Avoid raising taxes
  • Increase total debt hidden inside trust fund obligations

Gen Z keeps bitching about how “Boomers” are making life hard on them because housing costs or something. This is not how the previous generations really screwed them. The Silent Generation (those born between 1928-1945- my parents’ generation) were young adults when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935, establishing it as part of the New Deal to help workers and the elderly during the Great Depression. The architects of this deal were the Greatest Generation (born 1901-1927), led by FDR.

What Social Security was, was a plan for the Silent generation to be made whole because the Greatest generation screwed up the nation’s economy. In order to prevent the silent generation from stringing people up from lampposts, the Social Security Ponzi scheme was invented. This permitted the Silent generation to be taken care of in their older years, despite the fact that the Greatest generation had wiped out everyone’s retirement nest eggs.

At the same time this was being done, FDR also eliminated the domestic gold standard. In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt:

  • Prohibited the private ownership of gold bullion
  • Stopped redeeming dollars for gold inside the U.S.
  • Devalued the dollar

But at this time:

  • The Greatest Generation (born ~1901–1927) were young adults
  • The Silent Generation (born 1928–1945) were children
  • Baby Boomers had not yet been born

So this step did NOT involve Boomers.

The greatest generation had spent all of the silent generation’s money on booze, coke, and hookers, so the silent generation was reimbursed by stealing the future earnings of their children, the baby boomers. Like all Ponzi schemes, the people who got in early made the most money, and those who got in late are paying the bills. The older generations got way more than they paid in, but have ignored how badly they shafted their descendants.

In 1971, Richard Nixon permanently ended the ability of foreign governments to convert U.S. dollars into gold and this is what truly created our modern fiat currency system. This is the event almost everyone refers to when they ask about “who eliminated the gold standard.” Who were the key players?

  • Richard Nixon (born 1913) → Greatest Generation
  • His advisors (Shultz, Connally, Burns) → Greatest & Silent Generations
  • Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964) were young adults, entering the workforce, or still teenagers.

Although Boomers didn’t decide the change, the fiat-dollar economy that followed became the system they lived their entire adult lives under, and which they defended politically as they took leadership roles in the 1980s–2000s. To understand how bad of an idea Social Security really is, let’s look at the math:

Let’s say that a person put $4100 per year into a retirement account that is earning 8% per year. This would simulate a person making $33,000 per year and the 12.4% Social Security tax is invested instead of being given to the government, who will quite literally spend it on booze and hookers. We will compare that to Social Security.

After working for 47 years, the person turns 65 and decides to retire. They have contributed a total of $192,700 into their account. If that money had gone to Social Security, their monthly benefit would be $2800. If they had instead invested that money as above, the balance on the account would be $1,856,890. It would earn $12,379 per month in interest. We have all been screwed out of our money.

So now generations that comprise the Millennials and GenZ are likely not going to get anything near what they are paying in, because all of it is gone. It’s been spent. That fund is nothing but a file cabinet full of several trillion dollars in IOU’s, but there is no money in there.

That is why the younger generations should be angry- they were robbed of their future earnings nearly 100 years before they were even born. They were born into a life of slavery. It wasn’t the Boomers who did it- it was the Greatest generation and the Silent generation- if you are GenZ, you were robbed by your great-great grandparents.

The system is insolvent. There isn’t enough money in the world to cover the debts created by that system. Currently, Social Security owes everyone about $75 trillion more than we have to pay- an amount that is double what our national debt already is- in other words our national debt isn’t $34 trillion, it’s more like $107 trillion. If you total all of the money in the world: every nation, every currency, every ounce of gold, it comes up to $134 trillion.

In other words, we are on the cusp of owing more money than actually exists. Even the official national debt of $34 trillion wouldn’t be eliminated if the government confiscated every 401k, IRA, 457 plan, and all other retirement accounts. The retirement accounts of US citizens are only worth about $31 trillion.

We are about to see a collapse of the US economy, and with it, the world economy. It’s inevitable.

By Divemedic, ago

Property Tax Cuts

The Republican Legislature of Florida is proposing changes to the state’s property tax policy. There are a number of proposals that will make it to the 2026 ballot, and I have researched them so you don’t have to. I am going to break it down for you, using my own taxes as an illustration. Then you decide which is the one you want.

In my case, I pay about $6100 per year in property taxes on a $600,000 home. It breaks down like this:

  • $1700 goes to the county
  • $2000 to the town
  • $1900 to the school board
  • $400 per year goes to police, fire, EMS, hospital, and the water authority. This part is not an ad-valorum tax.

HJR 201 (Steele): Eliminates non-school ad-valorum property taxes for homesteads entirely. This would lower my taxes to $2300 per year ($1900 for the school board, $400 to police, fire, EMS, hospitals, and the water authority). This bill doesn’t prevent taxes that are flat fee based. Localities will likely switch to a non ad-valorum tax scheme, such as charging each property a flat fee as a tax.

HJR 203 (Miller): Phases out those same taxes over 10 years by adding an additional $100,000 exemption added each year. My taxes would go down by $500 the first year, $500 the second, and so on, until my taxes were finally about $2300 per year. This bill doesn’t prevent taxes that are flat fee based. Localities will likely switch to a non ad-valorum tax scheme, such as charging each property a flat fee as a tax.

HJR 205 (Porras): Exempts Florida residents 65 and older from paying non-school property taxes on homesteads. This one won’t change my taxes a bit until I turn 65, meaning that towns will simply raise taxes on everyone else to make up for the shortfall. Since those over 65 already get major breaks, many of them don’t pay taxes, anyhow. Politicians won’t face as much voter backlash. I think this is the one that politicians will love.

HJR 207 (Abbott): Creates a new 25% homestead exemption on non-school taxes — aiding current and first-time homebuyers. This one was trickier to decipher. I believe that it would lower my taxes by about $400 per year. It doesn’t prevent rate increases. I predict that localities will respond by raising milage rates. In the end, there will be no net change in what you actually pay.

HJR 209 (Busatta): Offers an extra $100,000 exemption to homeowners who carry property insurance, intended to ease overall housing costs. This one won’t make a huge difference. It would cut taxes by about $500 per year, but it would be an effective subsidy to insurance companies, who will happily raise insurance costs in response. It honestly looks like it was written by insurance companies.

HJR 211 (Overdorf): Eliminates the cap on “portability,” allowing homeowners to transfer their entire Save Our Homes benefit to a new property, even if it’s of lesser value. This one only lowers your tax liability if you sell your house and buy one of lesser value. I just went through this when I moved two years ago.

HJR 213 (Griffitts): Adjusts caps on taxable value growth — limiting increases to 3% over three years for homesteads (currently 3% annually) and 15% over three years for non-homesteads (currently 10% annually). This one won’t help now, it will just keep taxable value from growing as quickly as it does now. The loophole here is so large, you can drive a truck through it- there is nothing here that prevents localities from raising rates, the only cap is on taxable value. The net effect is that this won’t change your taxes a single cent.

In my opinion, HJR201 is the only one that will change anything, since a person owning a $200,000 house will wind up paying the same taxes as a person owning a million dollar house. To me, that is fair, since both are nominally receiving the same government services. Same services should mean same taxes.

By Divemedic, ago

Florida Taxes Rising 10x Faster than Population

Property taxes in Florida are skyrocketing.

The population of the state of Florida has increased the most of any US state, but the increase in population was still only 8.2% since 2020. Where is all of the money going?

Taxpayers are being fleeced. Ripped off to pay for DEI, illegal immigrants, and for government employees to groom your children to turn them into twinks and trannies. Enough is enough.

By Divemedic, ago

It Must Be Deliberate

This article has hit my feed several times recently, and the author is either deliberately being deceptive, or she is just a moron. The headline reads: “I Asked ChatGPT What Would Happen If Elon Musk Paid Taxes at the Same Rate as the Middle Class” The claim is made in the article that Musk only pays a tax rate of about 3 percent, because his net worth increased so much.

The article claims that Musk can dodge taxes by using the value of his assets as collateral to take out a loan, which isn’t taxed. They are demanding that we tax people on the unrealized gains of their assets, because rich people something something.

The author is comparing apples to Volkswagens. The middle class, for the most part, pays taxes on income. It’s right there in the name: Income Tax. In the article, you are talking about taxing the rich on their wealth. It’s two entirely different concepts. If the two were equal, the middle class would be paying taxes on the value of their house, not on what they make.

As an example, let’s say that an average guy and his wife are making the US median income of $80k. They have two kids, take the standard deduction, and are thus paying $9400 in income tax, plus Social Security, Medicare and other payroll taxes totaling $11,752. That makes this family’s effective tax rate 14.69%. However, his house is worth $40,000 more than it was last year. That $40k is an unrealized gain, and this lowers his effective tax rate to 9.7%.

Now look at Elon’s taxes. They are screaming that his wealth increased by $86 billion in 2021, but he “only” paid $8.6 billion in taxes. They don’t say what he actually made, just what he is worth. It just isn’t a proper comparison.

My opinion here is that the powers that be desperately want the ability to tax wealth. Currently, this isn’t permitted because the 16th Amendment only permits the taxing of income, not wealth. Once they get the power to tax what you own, and not just what you make, there is no limit to what all of us can be taxed on.

  • Your retirement account? 2% annual tax
  • Your house? 4% annual tax
  • You have a collectable car? taxed at 5% of its gain

The beauty of this, is that even if your unrealized gains are adjusted for inflation, the official rate of inflation is lower than the actual rate. So if they let you deduct 2% of your unrealized gains as being inflation, but the actual rate of inflation is 5%, you will pay taxes on that extra 3%.

This will make all of us poor in no time.

By Divemedic, ago

Property Taxes Again

Governor DeSantis is pushing to have a ballot initiative on Florida’s 2026 ballot. The initiative would be to eliminate property taxes.

Those who oppose this claim that counties, school boards, and other government entities rely on this to provide essential services. That’s a load of crap. On average, counties only rely upon property taxes for 18% of their expenditures. Of course, if you ask the counties, they play a bit of a shell game with the facts:

“If you want to get it from sales tax, well, it’s really going to disproportionately hurt lower income,” Kroll said.

Each year Kroll’s offices collect more than $700 million from property taxes, he said.

“The majority of it goes to the school board that that’s about $248 million,” Kroll said.

The remaining revenue goes to the Seminole County Board of Commissioners and Kroll said they use most of that money to fund the budgets for the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office and Fire Rescue.

  • It isn’t going to disproportionately affect lower income. See, lower income will buy less stuff, so they will pay less in taxes. If a person spends ten times as much, they will pay 10 times more in taxes. That’s how proportionality works. What they really mean is that the poor are now paying nothing, while those who aren’t poor are paying for bullshit that isn’t necessary. There are so many carve outs and exemptions, that nearly half of the people in my small town pay NOTHING in property taxes. More on that in a minute.
  • Don’t look now, but $248 million isn’t most of $700 million
  • The Seminole county school board has an annual budget of just over $1 billion. Only 1 in 3 households in Florida has a school aged child, yet we are each paying thousands to send those kids to school, even though education is a giant failure. It’s a huge drain of resources.

Seminole County’s proposed 2025 budget is $1.2 billion, which includes a potential property tax increase for 2025. That amount also doesn’t include the money that goes to the school board, because that is a different budget. In fact, they are increasing the milage rates for property taxes by 10% over 2024 levels, as well as increasing the county gas tax from 6 cents to 11 cents per gallon, and increasing taxes on electric, cable, and telephone.

With property values climbing, there is no need to raise taxes, but they do like them some tax and spend. Government officials always like to blame the services that are popular for tax increases, even though there is plenty of room to cut other, unneeded services. People don’t want to see the fire department cut, so they fund things like free needles for drug addicted transgender unwed mothers, then cry poor when there is no money left for the fire department.

Let’s take a look at the Seminole County Sheriff’s budget: There is plenty of waste here. The SWAT team has 20 members, and spends $4.5 million a year on it. That is a lot of money. Perhaps there is some room for cuts there. The sheriff’s office is paid $4.4 million per year to provide school resource officers to Seminole county schools, but actually providing those officers costs the Sheriff’s office $9.9 million per year. The cheaper way to go is to have the schools participate in the Guardian program, allowing teachers who volunteer to go through the training to be armed at school. Most counties in Florida who are part of the Guardian program accept the grant money, but then pay cops to fill the roles while not allowing teachers to participate. It’s a HUGE waste of money to have cops there when so many teachers would do it for free. Then they are spending all of that cash, only to find out that school resource officers aren’t required to do a damned thing if, God forbid, there actually IS a shooting at their school.

I pay over $6,000 a year in property taxes. 28 percent of that goes to the county, another 33 percent to the town, 31 percent to the school board, and the remainder to police, fire, EMS, hospital, and the water authority.

Overall, the loss of property tax revenue would mean that government agencies would need to get rid of some luxury items and perhaps learn to stop wasting money. If I could vote more than once to get rid of property taxes, I would.

By Divemedic, ago

More Fat

In yet another example of tax funds that can be cut from the budget, people who want to upgrade their homes at taxpayer expense are angry that the state isn’t taking your money and giving it to them.

That’s $280 million per year that is stolen from one set of homeowners and given to another. A married couple with two kids who make more than $27 per hour, can’t receive your money.

That budget money is $30 taken from each household in Florida. Just one program. How many more can be cut?

By Divemedic, ago

Property Taxes

As I have posted before, property taxes in Florida are easy to understand, mostly.

Ad Valorem

In Florida, the county property appraiser is an elected position that estimates what your house is worth each year, called your “market value.” If your house is your primary residence, you can take a deduction called the “homestead exemption” of $25,000 from that market value if your home has a market value of more than $50,000. If your home has a market value of over $100,000, you can take another $25,000 exemption. This second exemption doesn’t apply to school taxes. The result is called your “assessed value.” Because of the second homestead exemption, this means that your home gets two assessed values: one for property taxes, and the second assessed value for school board taxes.

Each July, the property appraiser mails out the proposed value of each property to the property owner. If you don’t think that the value is fair, you have 30 days to appeal that valuation. Most people want it to be as low as possible, because that is the value that your taxes are based on.

It seems complicated, but it really isn’t. For example, let’s say that your house has been deemed by the property appraiser’s office to have a fair market value of $125,000, and your county charges a property tax rate of ten mills, plus the school board charges of 6 mils. You would take the $125,000 market value and subtract your homestead exemption to arrive at an assessed value of $75,000 for property taxes, and $100,000 for school board taxes. The tax of ten mills would make your property taxes $750 and $600 for the school board taxes, making your total property tax bill $1350. Clear so far? Good, because it gets a bit more complicated.

Save Our Homes

Back in 1995, the voters of Florida passed an Amendment to the state Constitution that limits the annual increase in the assessed value of your homestead to the lesser of 3% or the consumer price index. Since real estate increases more than that in value each year, the longer you own your home, the less you pay in taxes. The gap between the market value and the assessed value is called your “Save Our Homes” credit.

In most cases, you want the property appraiser to set your assessed value as low as possible. The only reason you don’t, is if you are about to move to a more expensive home. The reason is called portability. If you are moving from an old house to a new one, you can take your Save Our Homes credit with you. That can mean a significant tax savings.

Other Exemptions

There are other tax exemptions.

  • Any widow/widower who owns property and is a permanent Florida resident may file for a $5,000 exemption.
  • Homeowners who are totally & permanently disabled get a $5,000 exemption.
  • The un-remarried, surviving spouse of a law enforcement officer, a correctional officer, a firefighter, an emergency medical technician, or a paramedic killed in the performance of duty gets a 100% exemption on property taxes. There is an exception to this that I will explain later.
  • Homeowners over 65 years of age who have an income less than $37,500 a year get an additional $50,000 exemption.
  • In fact, there are a dozen more exemptions that also are available, but I don’t feel like listing them all here. The point is that the tax system has become cumbersome, confusing, and unfair.

Milage Rates

The tax collector (also an elected position) charges a “millage rate” as an “ad valorem” property tax. Each “mill” is 0.1% of your home’s assessed value.

The county charges me 5 mils, the school board charges a bit over 6 mils, water control district charges half a mil; police, fire, hospital taxes, and EMS collectively charge 1.4 mils, the town charges 7.5 mils, and some other charges total up to almost 21 mils, or about 2.1%.

Fees

Some towns and counties charge fees that are part of your property taxes, but are not based on your property value. These are usually flat fees, for example each address may be taxed $150 a year for fire fees regardless of value. This is usually done so that the local taxing officials can raise taxes for social programs while blaming the increase on something palatable like the fire department. They simply take the money they were spending on fire and redirect it to whatever pet project they want to fund, then use the fire fee money to continue (or even cut) the fire department’s funding. Then they blame the fire department for the “tax increase.”

Total Taxes

After homestead exemptions, other exemptions, and Save Our Homes are all subtracted, the result is the “Taxable Value.” The milage rate is applied to that number. If you own a $300,000 house, you would be paying $5500 a year in property taxes. I pay even more than that.

Taxes aren’t just a money grab, they are a means of social engineering when you grant carve out exemptions to favored groups like the AARP, illegal immigrants, and others. They are also a grift, in that much of this money gets directed into the pockets of politicians and their friends.

and you have to pay them, or see your property confiscated and your ass in jail.

One note about the exemption for public safety that are injured in the line of duty. If you are off duty and see an auto accident, medical emergency, or fire, the pressure to do something is large. I used to stop for those sorts of things. Until the case of Shane Kelly, that is.

Firefighter Kelly stopped to assist victims of an auto accident on the Florida Turnpike in 2002. Shane was off duty. He was killed in full view of his wife when a tractor trailer slammed into the accident vehicles.  There were 2 occupants of the truck that killed Firefighter Kelly, and there was enough confusion as to which of them was driving that neither of them was ever charged.

The Federal Government ruled that Sean Kelly was acting in his capacity as a private citizen when he was killed, and since his death was not a line of duty death, his widow was not entitled to any of the benefits of the LOD status. Imagine how you would feel as an EMT, Firefighter, or other responder if you knew that helping an injured person carries the same risk of injury or death whether you are on duty or off duty, except that if you are injured, not only are you NOT paid for your time and skill, but you are not insured for that potentially career ending injury. Who will feed your family? Care for your kids?

In a meeting with my employer’s attorney, where Firefighters were attempting to get a written policy on what would be considered Line of Duty injury for off the clock employees, we were told that such decisions for off duty personnel would be made on a case by case basis by Administration AFTER the fact. I made a comment along the lines of, “So you get to decide AFTER I am injured whether or not you will pay for it. Will that decision take factors like the cost of treatment and PR benefit to you into account?” That REALLY pissed off the attorney. (I call ’em like I see ’em.)

After I learned of that case, I stopped helping out while off the clock. That policy marked the end of my stopping to help in emergencies. In fact, that policy change was a huge factor in my decision to retire.

How do I feel about fire department taxes? That is a topic for later in this week. I know what you probably THINK my feelings are, but you are probably wrong…

By Divemedic, ago

Voting

You get the government that you vote for, and Oregon residents can’t understand how they keep seeing their taxes raised. They were only supposed to tax the rich, you see…

By Divemedic, ago

Official Robbery

Here is an interesting map of the world’s highest marginal tax rates.

I think that there is an important thing you need to realize has been overlooked about the US tax rate- it only is looking at IRS income tax. It isn’t taking the US Social Security tax rate into account. Adding that into the mix, and the highest US marginal rate is about 49 percent.

Furthermore, property, sales, or other indirect taxes are not included. It also omits state, provincial, and municipal taxes. In total, the US total tax burden averages out to about 31 percent of total income. Still, more than half of the people who live in the US are net receivers of US tax money. It’s a critical number. When more than half of the people who vote receive more money than they pay in taxes, there is no way that you can get the public support and votes to change anything.

Most of the people in the country care more about what people have left over after taxes than they are about the taxes that they themselves are paying. When I point out that a flat ten percent income tax with no deductions or adjustments permitted would get the nation $2.3 trillion a year in income tax revenue, people still complain. Why?

This would mean that a person who makes $10,000 a year would pay $1,000 in taxes, while a person making $10 million would pay $1 million in taxes, ten times as much. This isn’t as fair as a flat rate, but it’s more realistic and practical.

Still that isn’t good enough, because when I do point that out, the counter argument that they make is “Yeah, but that leaves the poor guy with only $9 thousand, while the rich guy still has 9 million.” To these people, taxes are a way of taking money from the rich so that everyone is equally poor. In other words, communism. It’s caused by pure envy and jealousy.

I maintain that if you took all of the wealth of the nation and redistributed it to each person, giving every one a million dollars, within 10 years the people who are now poor would all be broke, and the ones who are rich would mostly be rich again. Why?

The poor would spend it because they see money as something they use to buy things. Give people with this attitude a million bucks, they will have a house full of big screen TVs, gold chains, and fancy cars.

The rich would be rich again because they see money as a vehicle to make more money. While there are people who are rich due to graft and corruption, largely those people are government officials who earn their money by peddling influence. Most of the nation’s rich, the people in the top quintile, are there because of skill, hard work, and attitude. Give them a million bucks, and they will start a business selling those baubles to the people that are soon to be poor.

All taxes are supposed to be so that a society can have the things that it needs for us to exist- fire, police, courts, and common defense. Instead, it has become a way for one group of people to steal wealth from those who have earned it.

I don’t think that we should have ANY Federal level taxes on individuals. Instead, the Federal government should charge a per capita tax to each state. Let the states figure out how they want to come up with the money. Each state can charge it to their citizens, or perhaps they can add it as a tariff to exports. You want Alaskan oil? Salmon? Crab? Alaska is charging a tariff on that good in the amount of $$ to cover Alaska’s per capital tax obligations. Perhaps Florida could charge a tourist tax for beach or theme park access, or a tax on oranges. New York would be free to have an income tax. Each state decides. You get the idea.

By Divemedic, ago