Like Paying Taxes? Then you'll LOVE San Jose CA !

Residents (and guests) of San Jose (Santa Clara County) California pay more in total taxes than almost anywhere else in the entire country.

This is from the combined effect of 9.25% sales tax (combined state + county taxes), income tax, property tax, and a wide range of 'hidden' taxes (explained below; for "guests", there's the sales taxes, special hotel and airport taxes, and other hidden taxes specially designed for business conventions, etc...)

The odd thing is that, year-after-year, San Jose residents (or, at least, the ones who bother to vote) keep voting to increase the taxes they'll have to pay.
And I'll bet you a dollar  (which will cost you  $1.46 after state-and-local-taxes and program fees)  that in the General Election on November 2nd  the increased taxes applied by Santa Clara Measure A and Measure B will be "approved"...

Is it because they don't remember (or don't know) that they already approved a bunch of new taxes over the last 5 or 10  years?    Or is it because that the 'Measures' , when looked at in isolation ,    always seem like a small cost to pay   for   whatever noble cause is the subject that year   ("hospital closing!" Ka Ching!; "children's healthcare!" Ka Ching!; "police and firefighters! public safety!" Ka Ching!; "public transportation improvements that never materialize!" --   Ka Ching! "enviromental protection!" Ka Ching! )?

...

But going back to the hidden taxes I mentioned:

'Hidden taxes' represent a large part of our local-government's "operating budget" (read "salaries"); they consist of the combined effect (cost)  of
a huge number of taxes in the form of  "fees" and other charges (e.g. for "licenses")  applied by the city, county, and state which are deliberately obscurred in a way that makes the total-amount-paid  virtually impossible for the average person (or business) to calculate.

These taxes can also be thought to include  costs where a commodity/good/service is taxed multiple times (as in taxes paid by the manufacturer, then by the distrubutor, then by the business-owner, then by the 'end-consumer'),  
and costs paid to 'regulating' or 'administrating' government-agencies (in addition to the normal taxes which are already supposed to fund those beurocracies) which are associated with governmentally-mandated 'health and safety' (or similar) programs when they are of dubious benefit and/or overly-beurocratic .



 The bulk of what I call 'hidden taxes'  come not only from the more obvious taxes, which are actually listed as "tax" on things like utility bills and "registrations" (cars, pets, et al.), but also innumerable fees which are taxes- prententing-not-to-be taxes (seperate line items on bills, licences, registrations, etc. -- ranging from 'administration fees' to 'late fees' or 'business fees'--, or even in the form of some tickets/citations, when they are excessive or unreasonable  in a way that indicates that they are designed less for 'punitive discouragement' and more for income generation  ...).

 
The hidden taxes also include double- and triple- taxation effects which an average person doesn't realize they are paying; for example, in the increased cost (and corresponding increase in Sales-tax-paid!) of items bought  (like gasoline, or cigarettes) or services paid for (like cable/satellite TV, or internet service, or rentals), 
or the increased cost effect passed-on by business to end-consumers caused by the set of taxes and fees each business has to pay.  

Add to this charges  -- which, as money paid to the government, are actually taxes --   masquerading as Envirnomental (or similar wolf-in-altruistic-clothing programs) service-costs , such as the 'disposal fee' paid when every time you buy a tire ($10) or an LCD monitor/television (~$50),
or the costs of every automobile 'smog check' (one part goes to the garage -which is also receving tax-money, in various forms, as part of the program- the other to the government)... Then's there's the "CRV" (California/Cash Redemption Value) which is a tax you pay on beverages. Supposedly, it was made to encourage recycling, but it was designed for a time before recycling with the trash was widespread, and the system has been made so beurocratic, inconvient, inconsistant, and annoying *^(footnote)   that only a very small percentage of people ever get any of that money returned to them,-- but the government gets their money every single time, _AND_ gets the additional income when sales tax is applied to the CRV on top of the sales tax applied to the cost of the item!


And don't forget the regulation of things like 'insurance requirements' or "mandatory Earthquake retrofitting" (which requirements, incidently, have forced many small-business owners to close over the last couple of years; I've seen two shops myself that were here for over a decade)...

And this is only a partial list of the "hidden taxes", which are mainly there not to improve the lives of San Jose citizens, but are there to insure the continuing paychecks of innumerable local government employees and contractors.

--footnote--
* Every notice how every other state that has a cash-deposit on cans and bottles actually lists an amount? And I've lived in other states where being able to return the can or bottle to the place you purchased it for credit -- which is a much more convenient way of running the program, which actually means more items will get recycled -- was required as part of the program. Good luck trying to get your 10-cents back at a grocery in San Jose...