Even the heartless IRS wouldn’t try to pull something this repugnant.
A frustrated local business owner sent me this copy of his annual Fullerton tax renewal in which a $25.00 tax payment was accompanied with a $20.00 “processing charge.”
You read that right. It’s an 80% surcharge for the city’s Herculean effort to cash your check and rubber stamp you as paid.
All local business owners must pay this ridiculous fee, from doctors and lawyers to handymen, ice cream trucks and taxi drivers. Presumably the actual processing is handled by administrative staff, who are likely already being paid out of the General Fund for other duties. How did they reach that $20 cost? Who knows?
And who decided that business owners should have to pay a fee to pay their taxes?
Ya'll have gone insane. Now pay up, hear?
#1 by The Fullerton Harpoon on April 20, 2012
A tax to pay your taxes. Well, that seems about right.
#2 by Anonymous on April 20, 2012
Travis, tell your friend to quit bitching. Somebody’s gotta step up and pay for McKinley’s $220,000 a year pension!
#3 by Hick Jones on April 20, 2012
Ah’m A’OK up here on the hill, an’ Ah’m gonna abstain a’cuz Ah’m confused. But don’t recall me none anyways.
#4 by Wrong Guy on April 20, 2012
Hick meant to say ‘anyhow’…
#5 by truthseeker on April 20, 2012
Send this over to the HJTA. I am sure that our city attorney has already “formulated an opinion” on it. Lets get a second opinion.
#6 by Send it back on April 20, 2012
Same fee in Placentia as of 2009 but their tax is based on gross sales with a minimum tax. I came to see how they hate businesses.
#7 by Caroline on April 20, 2012
These guys are so shortsighted. Think of all the lovely fees and taxes they could collect if they allowed medical marijuana dispensaries in Fullerton.
#8 by Anonymous on April 20, 2012
Or if they put a tax on cops who beat people up for no reason!
#9 by Anonymous on April 20, 2012
Clearly appears the tenured coucil members are losing touch with reality of the hard working citizens.
#10 by SherBear on April 20, 2012
I’m not surprised after hearing a proposal to have the city charge itself rent, paid by with a different fee added to our water bills to replace the illegal fee. Anymore news on this one?
Can I just up my own business where I charge people to give me money? What an entrepreneur I’d be! Imagine…a fee…for… um…if you want to know what you’d be giving me money for, that’s another fee for information. Hey, my time’s valuable. Surely one can’t expect my time to be taken up to answer noser questions without a fee!
#11 by Greg Sebourn on April 20, 2012
What’s worse is that, since the employees do not have to enter their time on a time sheet and state what they did for those hours which they seek to be paid for, there is no way to prove or disprove “costs of service.”
I say we need to audit ALL of City Hall.
#12 by Barry Levinson on April 20, 2012
This is one way the city is trying desperately to make up for its horrendous stewardship of our city finances. They are in effect charging fees that in many cases are 3, 4, 5 and even 10 times more than the cost to provide these small services.
In other words ladies and gentlemen, this is another in-lieu-of good government, excess charges “gotcha” to the public!
I have been working diligently to get these increases removed entirely or brought down to reason within the Parks and Recreation Dept. These are the prices the Engineering Dept. requires P & R to charge the public.
I have been met by a refusal by the Engineering Dept. to roll back or eliminate these Special Permit charge increases.
The city through the Engineering Dept. in this case are going after our children’s organized sports teams.
Another example of government mismanagement and government power running amuck.
#13 by The Desert Rat on April 20, 2012
Barry, nobody has opened up that box in years. Well, it’s never been opened.
The less visible fees are just upped every year by a toady council.
Greg is right. Fullerton City Hall needs a comprehensive airing out by an auditor who is not hired and beholden to the staff.
#14 by Retarted Flu on April 20, 2012
How about the horrendous stewardship of your own personal finances, BK Barry? Another example of hypocritical bullshit from a blowhard.
#15 by Reality Is Poof on April 20, 2012
Doh!!
#16 by Tuco Ramirez on April 20, 2012
When you need money, a city will do anything it can to stay solvent. Look at Bell, they had the police towing cars whether they were illegally parked or not. The towed cars went to the one or two tow services impound lots that charged exhorbitant daily rates and kicked it back to the city. The city of Bell needed the money to pay the City Manager $850,000 per year salary, and the police chief over $400,000 per year. They of course resigned but kept their huge pensions. The city manager needed the large salary to pay for the 25 thoroughbred horses he had racing at Emerald Downs in Seattle/Tacoma.
Fullerton needs the money to pay for the bloated police pension and disability system + the upcoming settlements since they did not learn how to “Do the Right Thing”!
City councilmembers need to stay awake, not sleep, not tell people off who have opposing viewpoints, etc. The three pension busters need to retire permanently.
#17 by Johnny Donut on April 20, 2012
Someone needs to assess all of the bullshit fees, charges, assesments and taxes in this city and then the council can eliminate all of them in one fell swoop.
#18 by truthseeker on April 20, 2012
We need to not only re-invent the wheel but we also need to replace the 3 bald bearings. $250 million per year riding on worn out radials with bad bearings, a front end that can barely keep us from going over the cliff with an intake that is sucking us all dry.
#19 by Anonymous on April 20, 2012
and the suspension, oh the suspension.
#20 by Mayor Quirk's Conscience on April 20, 2012
And who is going to have the balls to immediately suspend the illegal 10% fee on water bills? Not me for two reasons. One, I do not have balls and secondly, I had the chance recently to do so and failed…………….
#21 by Vernon Dozier on April 21, 2012
Nothing new. The $20 charge has existed forever.
They also charge $20 for MINOR revisions to your business license. For example, say you own ABC Roofing and decide to form a corporation. City Hall will stiff you for $20 to add the word “Inc.” to the end of your business name, for an existing business license.
#22 by van get it da artiste on April 21, 2012
absolute power absolutely corrupts, Fullerton gets away with this over and over again replicated in every one of its “public services” to its community because it is not a public service or representative government. the city of fullerton has not had the best interests of its community as its raison d’ etre for decades. Instead it has found every unreasonable way to gouge it to death with fees, licenses, taxes