Without going to much into how much I LOVE being taxed AGAIN and AGAIN on items that I have previously purchased and paid sales tax, I had the pleasure of going over a document today entitled "Whatcom County Personal Property Depreciated List - Equipment as of January 1, 2007 - For Taxes Payable in 2008."
As I first went over the thing with my book keeper, Heather Pavlosky, I seriously found myself wondering if John (co-owner of Mindfly) had typed this letter up and set it on my desk as a joke. All I could say was wow. How completely, utterly, without a single right ... wrong, wrong. And in so many ways.
To illustrate how complete this paper was in it's lack of correctness, I offer this image and the following excerpts:
Image
The blue strike throughs are my marks indicating I no longer own the item in question. For me the only upside to doing this exercise was to find out that the county can actually tax you on items that you have fully depreciated long ago if the determine they have value. The majority of these items were computers and software purchased between 1999 and 2003 that apparently are worth something to someone. If I only knew.
Excerpt 1
Visual Studio NET Software 2006 - Purchased in 2003 - Assessed at $527
VS.NET 2006 does not exist and if it did how could I have purchased in 2003. Ok, perhaps they meant Visual Studio 2003 (which we did use at one time) but $527. We have since upgraded to 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 was just released (which we won't buy until next year).
Excerpt 2
Computer 500Mhz Pentium 1 - Purchased 1999 - Assessed at $82
I am not kidding. Seriously, what did that run Windows 98? For the record, I honestly have no idea what happened to this ...
Excerpt 3
Computer Equipment - Purchased 2006 - Total Cost 9,743 - Assessed at $7112
I don't have a gripe about actually purchasing new computers (the fact that this single list item is then itemized into six other line items is a bit of an issue), however their appraisal blows me away. It would be great if there was a shotgun clause in the tax code somewhere that binds the county to immediatley purchase items under this personal property tax for the assessed value. If this were the case there would be a hundred new businesses selling the county computers after using them for a year. I would be lucky to get $2,500 for the lot.
When it comes right down to it, I think it is safe to say you will not find me holding a sign up in front of the post office outraged at this offense. Heather Pavlosky and I will work with the clerks at the county to get this all sorted out.
The fact that drives me crazy is that after it is all said and done, I will have additional accounting fees, have lossed billable hours myself and I will owe upwards of $100 to the county which will have lossed money on this transaction as it can't possibly have paid for their employees to generate this thing and then work with us to fix it.