No tax is more objectionable to me than the Kansas City, MO earnings tax. While I can somehow justify federal, state, county, property and sales taxes that may be needed to maintain the welfare of the country, state, schools in my community, etc., there is no discernible benefit I can see resulting from me paying a share of my earnings to the greedy inhabitants of Kansas City, MO. I’d rather burn the money than give it to the city that mugs non-residents for one percent of their income just because it can’t generate enough money from its own residents and/or sales and business activity. Unfortunately burning the money doesn’t absolve a person from paying taxes. I know, I know – many other cities have earnings tax and somewhere in Philadelphia it is over 4.5% so you don’t need to try to convince me that it’s a great idea; by some strange coincidence 100% of the people who like the earnings tax reside inside the city limits of the KCMO. I don’t and I don’t.
Back to the tax advice part of this post. If your place of employment is located in Kansas City,MO but you worked at least one full day outside the city limits i.e. went to an out-of-town conference or spent a day at the customer site in the beautiful Johnson County AND you are a non-resident, you are owed a refund. Lets say that you made $100,000 last year and Kansas City wants to confiscate $1,000 from you just because your employer made a horrible mistake when picking a location for the business. If you work 260 days a year, your earnings tax is little less than four dollars a day, therefore, if you traveled for 20 days that year you are owed close to $80. These calculations will not come up in your tax software, you will have to fill out a form and provide some supporting documentation such as travel records or an appointment book.
Lots of work for just a few dollars a day? When was the last time the city of Kansas City let you get away without paying for a parking ticket? Get your money back! They are counting on your inaction so they can keep your money. Even if your refund is five bucks it will require a lot more than 5 dollars worth of work at the City Hall, they will read your forms, review your paperwork, issue a check, buy a stamp – more action than you will ever get for your money, and you will spend your money the way you see fit, hopefully in your own community, where people are thankful for your business.
Development of my art skills stopped in the second grade when a teacher couldn’t recognize a watermelon in my drawing. However, I would have definitely applied more effort if I knew that a career in art allows for unlimited hours alone with nude women, who will not complain if their features will not look so flattering on the painting. It’s art, you know.
Life Magazine archives have some images of Thomas Hart Benton working on his painting “Persephone” with Imogene Bruton as a model.
The following photo located on Google server was deemed in violation of adult content policies by Google. Go figure. You can still see it by clicking the link.
The singer “was a virtual skeleton – barely eating and with only pills in his stomach at the time he died”, the paper said.
Imagine you are a coroner, crappy profession that it already is, your days are filled with horrible, bloody, disgustingly smelling, disfigured things that no one in the right state of mind would even want to be in the same building with, and instead of enjoying a nice sunny LA day you have to dissect a skeleton-looking, hairless, needle-ridden body of a weird celebrity. Not only do you have to chisel off the layers of plaster and artificial prosthetic parts, you for some ungodly reason have to cut his stomach open to see what he was eating before he croaked. It’s in the times like this that you must feel that you should’ve picked another specialty like a podiatrist or a proctologist, albeit their worldview is somewhat constricted.
That’s why I think every person should carry a card at all times with the contents of their stomach for the past 48 hours as a way to make the job of forensic pathologists just a little bit easier.
Let’s see, today my stomach contains:
a cup of coffee
cheese and turkey sandwich
a orange/apricot jelly (from Bermuda) and toast
cherries
persimmon
apple
some frozen yogurt from Yummo (mix of 3 flavors) because they don’t sell Korean tacos on Monday
chicken patty
a piece of dried banana
salad (Caesar dressing)
cheese quesadilla
corn
some lemonade
a piece of Tippins coconut-creme pie
I think that’s it. There maybe some leftovers of this cinnamon roll from Barb’s Kolache Bakery in Shawnee from a couple of days ago
and just a little bit of the cherry kolache ( I gave the other ones away)
but that’s just being too thorough.
See this is not so hard.
Maybe your coroner will be grateful for not having to dig through your rotting guts and will not “leak” embarrassing details of your autopsy to the media. In my book, that’s just paying it forward.
This set of photos is interesting in a sense that when I was growing up® nothing like this was left in existence in the majority of the country. The stores were stocked with a scarce selection of products and no need for visual advertising remained:anything that was slightly above the horrible level of the Soviet consumer products was swept off the shelves without hesitation; many times the lines were so long that people in the end didn’t know what was being sold, they figured anything worth buying will find some use at home or would be appreciated by other family members. Sometimes after hours in line, the supplies ran out and disappointed people were off to try their luck elsewhere.
With empty shelves, long lines and sad-looking products around me, it was hard to believe my parents’ stories about many things being plentiful in the late 50’s and 60’s. Grocery stores filled with caviar and various delicacies seemed impossible to me. Not that I was deprived of good food and dressed in garb; we had more or less of everything from good food to decent clothing but most of it wasn’t purchased in the regular retail establishments. From black market to bribery, there were other ways to acquire things.
Note: the prices you see on some storefronts are in pre-1961 rubles, in 1961 they were exchanged 10 to 1.
No tax is more objectionable to me than the Kansas City, MO earnings tax. While I can somehow justify federal, state, county, property and sales taxes that may be needed to maintain the welfare of the country, state, schools in my community, etc., there is no discernible benefit I can see resulting from me paying a share of my earnings to the greedy inhabitants of Kansas City, MO. I’d rather burn the money than give it to the city that mugs non-residents for one percent of their income just because it can’t generate enough money from its own residents and/or sales and business activity. Unfortunately burning the money doesn’t absolve a person from paying taxes. I know, I know – many other cities have earnings tax and somewhere in Philadelphia it is over 4.5% so you don’t need to try to convince me that it’s a great idea; by some strange coincidence 100% of the people who like the earnings tax reside inside the city limits of the KCMO. I don’t and I don’t.
