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Originally Posted by Feuer Frei!
Yet you drive with the car?
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Certainly. I have no doubt that they'll catch me eventually and give me a ticket. I've been caught four times so far, but I only had to pay once. In the 11 years I've been driving I've paid for registration on three purchased vehicles and one ticket, for a total of roughly $450. If I had just paid my registration the cost would have been around $550, so I'm winning.
Even if I weren't, I would still refuse to pay on the basis of principle. I am not some witless cash source for wasteful, arrogant,ineffectual bureaucracies. They can try to force me to pay, but I'm going to make the bastards work for their money. It's not much of a statement, but it's a statement.
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Once again, we are in total agreeance here.
I get jacked off too, considering that the actual registration fee, not the CTP (Compulsory Third Party) is bugger all. I pay approx $270 or thereabouts in just the fee of registering the car. No insurance ofc, that is extra, depending on where you live. Now, the bulk of the fee is made up of taxes for the state government. I think off by memory out of the $270-odd, $200-odd is tax. And god knows where they spend that, because one area that the money is meant for is roads, improvement of roads just to name one. And the roads are crap here. Absolutely no idea in how to build roads here.
Another thing that pisses me off is that in Queensland it is $200 dearer to register my car than in NSW!!! $200 !!!! I queried that once and was mistified at their answer: "That's just the way it is here, that's what we charge"!
Now, considering my car is only a V6, no modifications of any sort to the engine or rest of car, apart from power windows and an immobiliser, which is stock standard, and the car being less than 10 years old, what highway robbery!
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Indeed. All taxation is theft, no matter what the reason behind it. At its core, the concept of taxation is no more moral than an extortion racket. Either you pay, or you
pay, with your life if necessary. With such a mechanism at the heart of the idea, it's no wonder that we're often forced to pay outrageous prices for services that nobody is happy with.
Sometimes you get lucky and settle in an area where the intentions behind taxation are benign and there is a conscious effort to mitigate the cost to taxpayers. In those cases, most (including myself) are happy to pay, even if government operates at a loss. Other times, you get exactly what you would expect from a comfortable monopoly with the right to exercise force, which is to say, nothing for your money. You become a support mechanism for an entrenched social institution.
I refuse to be used like that. I demand a reasonable amount of accountability and concrete results from those I cede authority to in exchange for my consent. If they deem my demands unreasonable, they are welcome to try to take what they think they deserve, but I will not make it easy for them.