Letters to the editor

What hurts?

Not a square inch hasn't been squeezed

Editor, The Times:

My husband owns a small business in Seattle and I handle the bookkeeping. I just finished paying our quarterly 2008 taxes. If you're wondering why prices have increased so much, the place to start is the local and state taxes. Here is a brief synopsis:

1. State and City Business and Occupation (B&O) Tax: This tax is based upon the type of industry and gross receipts. This means if your business generates $10,000 of gross income and your expenses are $5,000, you are still charged tax on the $10,000, not the net income. This is a completely regressive, as well as punitive, approach to business taxes.

Businesses are also charged a "Use Tax." This tax is for items purchased outside the state of Washington for which you did not pay sales tax. For example, your business purchases a computer in Oregon (no sales tax) and you have to pay the sales (use) tax to the state and city with your quarterly payment.

A new tax on the Seattle B&O is the "square footage" tax. So basically you get taxed for how much space your business occupies! This one really makes you want to be in business in Seattle!

2. Mayor Greg Nickels, in his finite vision, placed a 5 percent tax on all parking garages in Seattle in an effort to get people out of their cars. While some might view this as virtuous or even "green," the only outcome will be reduction in the number of people going downtown for appointments or shopping.

3. King County Personal Property (really one of my favorites): This tax is based on the equipment you use in the course of your business. A business purchases a new copy machine and pays sales tax. Then each year you have that copier, you pay an assessment for using it in the course of your business.

4. Another new tax added last year is something of an employee transportation tax. Basically, an employer pays a tax on how its employees choose to get to work. If employees take their own car, the employer gets taxed!

5. Don't forget the increased sales/use tax to 9 percent! That increase will supposedly be used for mental-health and chemical-dependency issues.

Next time you start complaining about prices including gas prices (reminder: we have one of the highest gas taxes in the country), look at your state and local legislators for the answers. The state of Washington and the city of Seattle are the absolutely worst places to have a business.

— Teresa Holland, Seattle

All these scratches on our knees

I live in Lacey. My company involuntarily moved our entire Tacoma work section to Seattle. I spend $400 a month on gas just driving to work, and it takes me more than an hour each way.

Puget Sound Energy wants to raise rates again, food prices are high, schools are screaming for levies, every insurance I own wants more money, I have to have dependable cars for the long commute, meaning car payments, and now they want to add another $100 or more for using the roads that I pay taxes on already, so I can drive to work to make everybody I mentioned happy.

Oh, did I mention that I work six days a week and my wife works and I can hardly stay afloat? I have a 5.5 percent mortgage on a $160,000 house — it does not get better than that in Washington — and have no credit-card debt.

The oil companies are robbing us, but they want to know how I changed my driving habits. I have not, because I work nights and there is no public transportation, I have no choice but to drive. My car gets 31 miles a gallon and still costs an arm and a leg.

People are suffering and the capitalists are bringing us to our knees, so they can have their $123 billion in profits and pretend everything is OK. I am disgusted at corporate America and at our politicians — everybody knows they scratch each others' backs, so don't insult our intelligence and put on dog-and-pony shows on television acting like somebody gives a damn.

— Mike Krieger, Lacey

Liver feels like a football

As President Bush [considers] a gesture to suspend the federal gas taxes from Memorial Day to Labor Day, I wonder if the big oil companies will seize this opportunity to raise the price 18 cents more? The profits have quadrupled since the price of a barrel of oil from the OPEC nations has gone over $100. ["McCain calls for summer-long suspension of gas tax," Times, News, April 16.]

But, where's the competition? When competing countries are selling their products, like cars, trucks and electronic equipment, etc., it's supposed to be good for the consumer.

Greed is a sickness that is hurting the whole world, not just here at home. So a plea to Big Oil: Ramp it down, will you? Or we won't be able to afford to eat, let alone drive to work!

I suggest the oil companies fix up and maintain the refineries to produce fuel in a more modern, efficient, and safe way for the people who work them — invest in that. It will be better for everybody. This will help the economy all over the world, and just maybe, make things a lot more peaceful.

— Rich Hemphill, Seattle

The heat just kills our appetite

We can thank Al Gore and his global-warming hype for creating the current worldwide food shortage. It makes no sense for us to be turning our food into fuel for our cars.

— Jack Goldberg, Kirkland

Something's stuck under the skin

"Outrage in San Juans as feds check ferry riders" [page one, April 22], on Border Patrol checks on passengers arriving in Anacortes, calls us a "relatively affluent county." This is shorthand that evokes island oligarchs huffing at the effrontery of a mere Border Patrol agent asking questions, let alone questioning citizenship.

It's true, we have an abundance of grandees. (I'd never met an "estate manager" before I moved here. I now know several.) But a more accurate description of the islands would be to call this the most unequal county in Washington state: the wealthiest with the highest poverty rate; the highest per-capita income and the lowest hourly wage. As a proportion of population, more children get federally subsidized lunches here than any other place in our state.

People move to the islands for all sorts of reasons: to hide, to heal, to retire, to invest, to farm, to study, to paint, to live in a close-knit, rural community, to support a family in Michoacan or Oaxaca. It's a complicated place. The label "affluent" hides more than it describes.

— Bryn Barnard, Friday Harbor

The English doctor

Here's some relief

When I was an engineering student, we joked, "Us engineers don't need no English." It would seem journalists have a similar line: "We journalists don't need mathematics." How else to explain the attention given to the increase in felons being admitted into the military? ["Army, Marines give more waivers to felons," News, April 22.] A TV report told us the number of felons in the Army had doubled.

Aghast and deeply concerned, I sat down to study the full story. Here are two lessons for writers:

1. Numbers giving a total must be accompanied by other numbers that make clear the proper relationship and the significance. Examples: "IBM made a profit of $10 billion." This implies, usually, that profits are unconscionably large. If, instead, you say, "IBM made a $10 billion profit, representing a return of only 2 percent on invested funds," we get a more accurate picture.

"The projected U.S. budget deficit is $300 billion." While true, it should be put in perspective by adding something like, "This represents about 3 percent of gross domestic product." Or, "This represents about 13 percent of the budget."

2. Percentages must be correctly stated and compared. Examples: If you are taxed at a 4 percent rate this year and taxes go up next year to 6 percent, this not a 2 percent increase; it is a 50 percent increase.

If a poll taken yesterday showed 82 percent disapprove of the war in Iraq, compared with 65 percent last week, that is not a 17 percent increase, it is a 26 percent increase.

In the case of the felons accepted into the military, the total number is 903. This is only one-half of 1 percent of the approximately 180,000 recruits accepted. This hardly seems cause for alarm bells.

Relieved, I returned to reading my favorite part of the paper: the letters to the editor.

— Henry Kroeger, Redmond

Your I's are my concern

Jeff Deck's obsession with the improper use of apostrophes ["Crusade to edit America," 4/23/08] is something I can understand. For me, it's the way pronouns are misused, even among the well-educated.

Recently on a local radio station, university professor Richard Florida explained that the value of education had been drummed by his father into "my brother's and I's head."

Oh me oh my!

— Ron Schwert, Seattle