A Turnip Speaks Up - Taxed in Michigan

There's nothing that will get my dander up faster than bad news. Yesterday's bad news screaming straight off the front page of the Detroit Free Press was enough to cause me to blow a gasket, which is something I don't care to do on my day off. Since my state seems to think they can get blood out of a turnip, I think it's high time this turnip speaks up.

If you think that the economy is taking a downturn in your area, try being me. Living in Michigan these days is much like trying to empty the bilge of the Titanic with a play pail. Scratch that; make it a broken pail with no handle and a hole in the bottom. It's bad enough that business sucks because the manufacturing jobs have dried up and moved away. Property values are so far in the toilet that I'm not sure we could sell our house for what we paid for it back in 2005. It's so bad, I'm not sure we could get enough to satisfy the outstanding mortgage. Are you kidding? These days, you can buy a house in Detroit for $1,000 or less. There aren't many cars, even on Craigslist, for that little.

The other thing that has really irked me in the last couple of years are the series of commercials featuring Jeff Daniels that tout Michigan as the place to start or move your business. The "Let Michigan Give You the Upper Hand" commercials, sponsored by the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, have been seen in such faraway places like Arizona, Colorado and California, where people in their right minds wouldn't leave whether bribed by dollars or bullied by dynamite. I like Jeff Daniels (who supposedly lives here in Chelsea) as an actor, but he has to be blind in one eye and have a stick poking out of the other if he thinks this state is willing to cultivate a friendly business climate. So far, the State of Michigan hasn't done anything to foster my business. In fact, the state has thwarted my business' growth by throwing up road blocks every few months just to see if we are still breathing. Every time I see Jeff Daniels' smiling, phony face on TV, I want to throw a rock through it.

I've spent much of the last year researching our sorry state of affairs, and writing to every member of the legislature to protest the raising of taxes. From the lack of response, I surmised that it's far easier for the bureaucrats to raise taxes than it is to cut costs. Heaven forbid! Cut costs!? You mean, like they do in the private sector? What kind of blasphemy is that?

In the meantime, bloggers and plain old citizens like me have been crying in the breeze. From the looks of things, there have been a lot of us singing the blues.

If you own a business like we do, you'd know that April is the time of year when the first of the quarterly tax reports come out and payments are sent to the appropriate agencies. This quarter is the first one in which we suffer the new and improved Michigan Business Tax. This lovely piece of taxation was formulated to tax the service industries, now that the manufacturing sectors have bitten the dust. According to the Sunday paper, some of the businesses reported tax increases of between 9 and 226% and beyond. Our business is service related. I can't even get my accountant on the line to ask her how much more we are paying this year compared to last. I'm sure her phone has been ringing off the hook.

My husband and I (neither of us from here) have discussed liquidating the business and going elsewhere, someplace where we won't be taxed into the poor house. It was hard to consider doing, especially with young children who were born and raised here. Now that both are attending college on the Left Coast, with no intention of returning, it will be a little easier to make a transition. The only sticking point is deciding where the crucial point will be to cut our losses and start over, not easy for people of our age, who have invested so much time and energy, to do. Lansing should really take a look at what it's doing, before there's no one left in the state to tax. Other states would be wise to make Michigan a case study in what not to do. Instead of trying to prop up the status quo, they should think forward, before Michigan sinks to new lows and there is no one left to turn out the light.