Council should reject requirement to file taxes for exemption
In the July 8 edition of West Hawaii Today, Margaret Willie, chairwoman of the Real PropertyTax Stakeholders Task Force proposed that all Hawaii County property owners be required to file a Hawaii state income tax return annually to qualify for homeowner’s exemptions. She and other members of the task force believe this additional requirement will reduce the number of fraudulent requests for homeowner exemptions. I seriously doubt this.
In the article, Finance Director Nancy Crawford expressed concerns that “the proposed policy could place an extra burden on older and low-income homeowners who don’t file tax returns.”
Hopefully, this misguided and insensitive proposal will die a quiet death.
It will not reduce fraud.
It will be a burden on seniors and the low-income, many on fixed incomes, who may have to pay professional tax preparers to complete the paperwork.
It will burden the state with more meaningless paperwork.
If the proposal is considered by the County Council, I hope they will have the good sense to reject it.
Dennis Brown
Waimea
Many laws should be removed from books
Politicians love to create laws in their name. I guess just to be able to say “I did it” or maybe for legacy purposes. Either way, a lot of them are rubbish — the laws, that is. So, let me suggest a needed one. A law fining each and every candidate $200 for each and everyone of their campaign signs that remain standing or posted around the island one week after an election. After all, it is all in the name of environmentalism.
Then, while the politicals are in session, they could inact a law that these very same politicals have to, during each session, spend time not creating but as Michelle “Mike” Kerr put so well in a July 3 letter, “for every law passed, an equal number of exiting laws be repealed.” I would say that our politicals be required to remove at least 25 — to begin with — of the many unneeded and frivolous laws from the books. If for no excitable reason than the saving of our forest by reducing the consumpition of all that paper.
Again, all in the name of environmentalism.
Hugo von Platen Luder
Holualoa