The price of eggs in China
Listen carefully, folks. You're about to hear us confess to a crime: Starting this week, you won't have to submit a certified copy of your property tax bill before subscribing to the Marion County Record.
That's right. We're dangerous criminals.
How so? Thank our friends in the Kansas Legislature.
Starting this week, the state now requires that taxes be paid not on the basis of where it is purchased but on the basis of where it is delivered.
That means we have to charge more different tax rates than we can even begin to imagine.
The state's answer is to say, just use ZIP codes. Apparently, Kansas City and Wichita have become so strong in Topeka that the folks up there have forgotten that in most of the state, ZIP codes extend well beyond city limits.
What we're going to do is the only thing we can do: lower our prices so that everyone will pay the same total, including taxes, regardless of whether his or her mailbox is 100 feet inside or outside of any particular city limit.
If you get your mail inside the city limits of Marion, you will play $30.83 plus $2.17 tax. The couple next door, who have the same ZIP code but live just outside the city's boundaries, will pay $31.04 plus $1.96 tax. Their friends over in Hillsboro will pay $30.90 plus $2.10 tax.
In all cases, they will give us $33.00, and we'll give the state $2.17 of that, even if we really owe the state only $1.96 or $2.10.
Figuring out whether we owe 7 or 21 cents less would cost us more than we would save — unless we decided to go the route of some industries and charge an additional $5.00 "regulatory service fee" per subscription to definitively determine in which municipality each copy of the paper was being read.
As for which municipality will end up getting what part of each $2.17 we will be overpaying, God and the Kansas Legislature are the only ones who know for sure. And we cringe at the thought of putting those two names in the same sentence.
Meanwhile, if you want to have fun with the state tax people, go to Hillsboro and buy a new truck but insist that you take delivery not at the dealership but at a crossroads a mile out of town. It'll save you $75.00.
And by no means ever ask an appliance store outside the city limits to deliver your new stove to your home in town. In Marion, you would end up paying nearly 12 percent more taxes (a rate of 7.05 percent vs. 6.3 percent).
Silly? You bet. Now consider what this will do to the tax revenue Marion receives from a huge business like Western Associates, which ships millions of dollars of merchandise to customers mainly outside Marion.
For several years, Marion has been getting the taxes on those sales. That — thank you, Topeka — will be no more.
— ERIC MEYER
