Kids playing with illegal fireworks on 7/4/2019 started a fire that threatened to burn eight houses on the Redlands.
Independence Day in Mesa County offers fun and entertainment for many, but also causes fear, anxiety, property loss and taxpayer expense from fires and injuries.
This year, kids playing with illegal fireworks started a wildfire that endangered eight houses on the Redlands. The residents were briefly ordered to evacuate.
As a liberal progressive voter, I believe it is our patriotic duty to pay taxes for public amenities that make our quality of life great, like public safety.
This coming April, though, Grand Junction City Council will ask voters to increase the City’s combined sales tax rate from the current 8.02% to a whopping 9.16%, a rate even higher than the City of Boulder.
City Council has very good arguments for needing more money: we need more fire stations, emergency response times are too long, and we have roads and bridges in need maintenance and repair.
Of course City residents want the safety and security of these amenities, but the City hasn’t done anywhere near all it could to make the best use of revenues it already has, and to create new revenue streams to fund City necessities before it goes to City residents with a request that they pay such a big increase in city sales tax.
Colorado House Rep. Scott Tipton
Republican western slope House Representative Scott Tipton just voted to increase the national debt by more than a trillion dollars and alter the federal tax code in ways that will likely create hardship for many of his constituents. Every Democrat and thirteen Republican House members voted against the bill, but Tipton wasn’t one of them. The vote was a relatively close 226 in favor to 205 against.
Tipton voted to pass HR-1, the Republican “tax reform” bill which ends many of the deductions people have long used to help reduce their taxable income. Here are some of the things the bill will do:
The White House Buffett Rule calculator
The White House has posted a new online tool people can use to calculate how many millionaires pay a lower effective tax rate than they do. Citizens enter their wages, salary and other income and how much income tax they have paid, click a button and see the estimated number of millionaires who paid a lower effective tax rate than they did in 2009. The calculations demonstrate how under the current U.S. tax system, many millionaires are paying a lower effective income tax rate than most middle class families. In 2009, fully 22,000 American households made over $1 million, but paid the lowest effective tax rate such top earners have paid in 50 years. Of those top-earners, 1,470 paid no federal income tax at all on their million-dollar-plus incomes, according to data supplied by the Internal Revenue Service.
