In the meantime, bloggers and plain old citizens like me have been crying in the breeze. From the looks of things, there have been a lot of us singing the blues.

If you own a business like we do, you’d know that April is the time of year when the first of the quarterly tax reports come out and payments are sent to the appropriate agencies. This quarter is the first one in which we suffer the new and improved Michigan Business Tax. This lovely piece of taxation was formulated to tax the service industries, now that the manufacturing sectors have bitten the dust. According to the Sunday paper, some of the businesses reported tax increases of between 9 and 226% and beyond. Our business is service related. I can’t even get my accountant on the line to ask her how much more we are paying this year compared to last. I’m sure her phone has been ringing off the hook.

My husband and I (neither of us from here) have discussed liquidating the business and going elsewhere, someplace where we won’t be taxed into the poor house. It was hard to consider doing, especially with young children who were born and raised here. Now that both are attending college on the Left Coast, with no intention of returning, it will be a little easier to make a transition. The only sticking point is deciding where the crucial point will be to cut our losses and start over, not easy for people of our age, who have invested so much time and energy, to do.

Lansing should really take a look at what it’s doing, before there’s no one left in the state to tax. Other states would be wise to make Michigan a case study in what not to do. Instead of trying to prop up the status quo, they should think forward, before Michigan sinks to new lows and there is no one left to turn out the light.