A minor rant

We are soon to look at a new year. In some ways, we are excited while in others, apprehensive. I must admit that most of my apprehension comes from what the government plans to throw at us in the coming year to help pay for their increasing budgets and this massive health care issue.

Being a businessman now, I certainly see through some different eyes and will admit that. And in that same light, I see things that I would not have noticed before particularly how our state government is twisting this new tax program around to try and talk the people into voting for it. They try and increase their coffers by attacking corporations and saying that they need to pay more of their 'fair' share.

While their new plan will not affect me that much, it will increase the fees for having a corporation like mine by 1500%. They say that we are not paying enough in taxes but what they don't say is that we pay like anyone else. Every cent of profit that the corporation makes is added on to my wages at the end of the year so that I do pay my fair share. So, this just becomes another expense of the business which only in the end is a higher tax increase than one really imagines.

But it is not my type of corporation that is getting the worst of this 'fair' tax increase. It is the C corporation that will be affected the most and I feel we will see many of these dissolve. Maybe that is the underlying reason behind all of this, no one truly knows except the politician himself who as we all know does not always tell us those real reasons.

These C corporations are now to be taxed upon their sales and not their income. So, lets take a business such as mine. The actual income or bottom line is 5 to 10 percent of that figure. The staggering fact there is that there are corporations that will owe more taxes than they have income.

Those corporations will either dissolve or make wholesale changes from within.

The bottom line on all of this is quite simple. These are the creators of jobs that we direly need in this economy. We are in a state with a very high unemployment rate. Hundreds of people lined up recently for part time jobs in a new local restaurant.

The decisions of these corporations, in my thoughts, are very simple. Close their doors, lay people off, or change the way they do business. Either way you look at it, it means less jobs not more.

Now, equally in my simple way of looking at things, it also means that in the long run, less taxes for this same government.

Now, the second part of this is that they claim that they will create jobs with these tax increases. But, what they don't say is that those created jobs are short term and to sustain them we must continue a spiral of increased taxes.

Wouldn't we be better off creating jobs that are sustainable or that create more jobs? Who cares if some fat cat makes a bit of money off of that? At least their will be plenty of jobs for the people who need them.

I don't know about you, but I would rather feed that fat cat than that devouring vacuum called government who claims that they are acting on our behalf but in reality see only their own agendas.

Holy cow! I started off thinking that I was going to state the positive and ended up with all of this.

One thing that I do know. What ever the challenges that are placed in front of us, we will be resilient and creative. And we will keep our focus on what is the most important and that is people themselves.

My job and my crew's job is really quite simple. To serve our customers. To give them the best quality for the price in an environment where they feel welcome. To honestly and genuinely care for each person that walks through our doors. And then to reach outside those doors to a community around us and help out where we can. I truly believe that if we keep that focus, we can weather what ever storm that is placed in front of us.