In April 2014, I suddenly realized that when you buy gasoline, the receipt does not list all the different taxes you have to pay.
So I emailed the Illinois Policy Institute (https://www.illinoispolicy.org) and asked them to make up a facsimile of a gas receipt.
Here's what they came up with, and they featured it in a story on their website.
Turns out a gallon of gas in Chicago has eight taxes on it. In Park Ridge adds two cents more. (I think today they are higher.)
I went to a neighborhood gas station – the owner was a nice guy. I asked him if people get angry with him when gasoline goes up in price.
He said of course they do. I said, "Why don't you put a sign in your window, listing all the taxes they customers are paying on a gallon of gas?"
He said, "That's illegal in Illinois. I would get fined and could lose my gas station!"
“Forbidding gas stations to post the taxes per gallon is irresponsible and unconstitutional.”
Seems like the TEA Party should do something about this since it’s right up their alley. Can’t dump gas though. Could do a personal media dump.
Out here in NW Pennsylvania they have these charity events called "Turkey Parties", that basically are a night getting rip roaring drunk on free beer while they raffle off donated items (originally frozen turkeys, hams and such). You will see Rotary Club, or Volunteer Firefighters or other not-for-profits having turkey parties where they raffle everything from flatscreen TVs to guns... yes an inebriated gun raffle... what could POSSIBLY go wrong?
Anyways, coworkers of mine just ran a turkey party and you want to know the biggest item that gets a lot of tickets before they spin the big wheel?
Scratch-off Pennsylvania Lottery tickets. I sh!t you not...
These brainiacs out here pay money for a chance to have a chance of scratching off some unknown amount of money, MAYBE (maybe NOT).
Needless to say, the everyday drunken turkey party attendee out here in EBF, Pennsyltucky does not exactly hold a PhD. in mathematics... let alone have even rudimentary grasp of basic probability and statistics.
Years ago, in my high school economics class it was stated in the textbook that about 140 taxes were involved in the production of a pair of shoes from the time the hide was taken from the cow to being put in the store shelf.