Chicago Tax on Wine and the US Governments over Spending.

OK...I know I have been slacking here for a while, but I have been very busy working on Get Talked About clients and solidifying the GTA brand.

So I thought I would can the marketing speak and jump into a favorite topic of mine TAXES! The other day I am in the store buying a single bottle (OK several) bottles of wine, when I see this .10 tax per bottle on the receipt. The Liquor Tax in Chicago says I should be paying .36 per gallon or roughly .07 per bottle not .10. Where did the other three cents come from! I also looked in to other Chicago city taxes and found the number and amount of taxes we have to pay to the city of Chicago is ridiculous!( City of Chicago Tax list )

I couldn't bring upon myself to look at the state and federal charges on all the stuff one might purchase/use but this is what I did find....There is an .184 (or .19) Federal, Plus 6.25% sales tax and .3 % tax for underground storage tank fund, and other local sales and gasoline taxes and Diesel fuel taxes are 27.5 cpg for commercial highway users IN ILLINOIS GAS TAX ALONE! The average overall US/state gas tax runs between .53-.45 per gallon. Don't give me this crap that we need to pay higher taxes on gas to fix infrastructure, because half that money gets tied up in overpaying for repair/building and the bureaucracy of it all. Moreover, the US Federal Government saw 2005-2008 record tax revenues, yet we still couldn't get our act together. How do we go from spending 1.7 trillion in 2000 to 2.9 trillion in 2008. That is NOT all cost from the Iraq and Afghan operations, nor from inflation. Raise your hand if you can add hundreds of billions in debt annually, adding to a existing multi-trillion debt without answering to anyone.

So here is my point, the next time you hear politicians in Washington, be them Democrat or Republican say their party is going to lower the "income tax rate" on the average Joe, call bulls--t on them. Because what they may be doing is putting money back in to your left pocket and pulling out even more from the right.

I would love to know what the rest of you think about this situation.