{"id":19412,"date":"2015-07-09T11:45:26","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T18:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spiken.wpengine.com\/news\/bring-bo-taxes-into-21st-century\/"},"modified":"2016-10-23T16:50:30","modified_gmt":"2016-10-23T23:50:30","slug":"bring-bo-taxes-into-21st-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/letters\/bring-bo-taxes-into-21st-century\/","title":{"rendered":"Bring B&O taxes into 21st century"},"content":{"rendered":"

We live in Microsoftland. Hurray, now Amazon is in the ‘hood with its huge footprint in the Kent Valley. And average Kent people enjoy and use today’s technology throughout the day for all kinds of things to make life easier, simpler, happier, faster, better and even sometimes cheaper.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Yet, our Kent mayor wants to pursue antiquated 20th century methods for hunting down B&O tax avoiders by hiring more employees on the city payroll to eyeball, drive around, knock on doors, canvas neighborhoods and run up the time clock at tax payers’ expense. What a bad and inefficient idea.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

What’s wrong with utilizing technology to enforce an unpopular law like Kent’s B&O?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

There are plenty of cost-effective IT software solutions that could be linked to Olympia’s Department of Business Licensing. But, a well-paid mayoral Luddite stuck in the past might want more brown-nose cheerleaders at City Hall since she gave them such cushy and outdated jobs.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Technology doesn’t always feel warm and fuzzy; but, it gets the job done without a lifetime of bonuses, pay raises, healthcare and retirement benefits.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Just look at the success of the technology sector all around here.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Let’s bring cutting edge thinking to an unpopular tax rather than business-as-usual from the last century.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

C’mon City Hall, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist, but if you needed one, there’s a tech giant like Boeing in the ‘hood.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Git ‘er done!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u2013 Joy Etienne<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We live in Microsoftland. Hurray, now Amazon is in the ‘hood with its huge footprint in the Kent Valley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-19412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19412"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19412"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=19412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}