Martinsville Scraps Decals

The City of Martinsville has decided to scrap the notorious window decal effective in 2007. I previously lived in Buchanan County which had done away with the thing some time before I moved there. At that time Buchanan was one of only a very small handfull of Counties that had no decal. Whenever I visited Henry County it would always be pointed out to me that I was lacking a decal. Sometimes by County Sherriff's Deputies. It took some explaining to convince the Deputies that Buchanan did not require that awful thing. Henry County's Board of Supervisors are now looking at the option of eliminating it.

I have always had a major problem with the decal. If you consider it for a moment, it amounts to making you pay a tax, in order to show the world that you have paid a tax. In other words, you are forced to buy your reciept. And then forced to publicly display that reciept. Now, in Martinsville and other locales that are doing away with the decal, you no longer have to display the reciept, but you still have to pay for it. Although they are doing away with the decal, the fee for it will still be applied, just added onto your Personal Property tax.

It still sucks, but at least you don't have to scrape the dang thing off each year and replace it. That's the optimist side of me speaking. The "glass is half empty" side still believes it is wrong to continue to apply a tax to a tax. Maybe even more so than before, at least then I did have the tangible decal to hold in my hands for having paid the tax on a tax.