In spite of a seemingly ever-increasing blight, crime, a complete lack of civil services, etc., the City of Detroit imposes an income tax on anyone who works in the city. Now, I believe this is not abnormal for a city of its size, but the complete lack of competence in any civic arena is. I can’t wait for the media horde to descent on this city for Superbowl XL in a few weeks and lambaste our metropolis for the world to see…

Someone needs to re-introduce the Laffer Curve to the politicians in Detroit – this e-mail was circulated through my office on Friday:

On the back of the city tax bill, it states that if the winter/county [property] tax is not paid by the 15th [of January], there is a 1.5% pen[alty] & int[erest] fee per month retroactive back to Dec 1st. The 15th is on Sunday & the city is closed on Monday so they will be accepting payments on Tuesday, the 17th. Second, the city is increasing the pen[alty] & int[erest] fee to 4%. … [W]e’ve discovered the bills we received do not reflect this change & we cannot get tax bills with the correct amount due til the 17th.

And this — from a city that only collects about 65% (most cities collect about 95%) of the property taxes it bills? An old MetroTimes article titled “Dearth & Taxes” demonstrates some of the problems facing the City of Detroit, but here is the Reader’s Digest version:

The city doesn’t even know the names of close to 1/3 of the recipients of its bills; about 300,000 tax bills are addressed to “Taxpayer,” or “Resident.” Detroit also feels it is responsible for collecting its own taxes — when nearly every other city has handed such responsibility to the County wherein the municipality is located. More from MetroTimes if you’re interested.