Almost half the folks in Detroit don't pay their property taxes, leading to less dollars for police, fire, and street maintenance. That then causes the folks that are still paying their taxes to wonder what they get for their money:
Nearly half of the owners of Detroit's 305,000 properties failed to pay their tax bills last year, exacerbating a punishing cycle of declining revenues and diminished services for a city in a financial crisis, according to a Detroit News analysis of government records.
The News reviewed more than 200,000 pages of tax documents and found that 47 percent of the city's taxable parcels are delinquent on their 2011 bills. Some $246.5 million in taxes and fees went uncollected, about half of which was due Detroit and the rest to other entities, including Wayne County, Detroit Public Schools and the library.
Delinquency is so pervasive that 77 blocks had only one owner who paid taxes last year, The News found. Many of those who don't pay question why they should in a city that struggles to light its streets or keep police on them.
"Why pay taxes?" asked Fred Phillips, who owes more than $2,600 on his home on an east-side block where five owners paid 2011 taxes. "Why should I send them taxes when they aren't supplying services? It is sickening. … Every time I see the tax bill come, I think about the times we called and nobody came."
This week, a state-appointed review team concluded the city can't fix its financial problems. Any emergency manager appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder would have to grapple with a broken property tax system. The city's share of uncollected taxes last year was $131 million — an amount equal to 12 percent of Detroit's general fund budget.
Check out this passage, and see if it reminds you of anything else:
Detroit relies on a shrinking sliver of businesses and neighborhoods to pay the bulk of the bills. The three casinos, General Motors Corp., DTE Energy, Chrysler Group LLC and Marathon Petroleum Corp. paid 19 percent of collected property taxes. Five city neighborhoods, most of them downtown and along the river, paid 15 percent of the city's taxes and represent only 2 percent of the city's total parcels.
That makes me think about taxes in general in this great Country. How a few at the top pay the lion's share of the overall tax burden.
Wealthy Americans earn about 50 percent of all income but pay nearly 70 percent of the federal tax burden, according to the latest analysis Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office — though the agency said the very richest have seen their share of taxes fall the last few years.
CBO looked at 2007 through 2009 and found the bottom 20 percent of American earners paid just three-tenths of a percent of the total tax burden, while the richest 20 percent paid 67.9 percent of taxes.
The top 1 percent, who President Obama has made a target during the presidential campaign, earns 13.4 percent of all pre-tax income, but paid 22.3 percent of taxes in 2009, CBO said.
So in Detroit today, 2% of the neighborhoods pay 15% of the taxes; America in general, 50% of the citizens pay 70% of the taxes. We're seeing first-hand how that is failing in Motown, how long before the COuntry follows suit?
Why pay taxes anymore?
