Tax Day Sucks

As so many Albright students have informed me in the past couple of months the city of Reading sucks. [Why they don’t Google that fact before coming to school in this city is beyond me. Guess they would rather come here and bitch about the city than do a little research about a place they are going to be living in for the next four years.] The crime rate is high and so are the taxes. The property taxes keep going up making it impossible to own a house in this city let alone try to sell one. Who wants to buy a house here when just outside the city you can get a bigger house with more land and pay half the taxes on it?

Now doing my taxes I found out that they doubled our local income taxes in 2007! Of course we aren’t told about this so it comes as a big surprise when we owe the city money. It seems like every year I am going in to work and asking the accountant to take more out of my paycheck for local taxes. Who in this city can we complain to about the state of local taxes? And where that increased money is going?

I might not mind so much if they did something to improve this town, but the only change I have seen this year is a red LED interactive sign on the Penn street bridge. An ugly eyesore that is wasting precious electricity which in turn is wasting oil. No wonder gas in the Reading area costs more than in Philadelphia. Pretty sad when turnpike gas is less than local gas.