I've been hearing rumblings about this for years, and in the midst of the 2012 tax season, I started getting the telephone calls asking me to write about it. But because of timing of it, and the amount of research I needed to do on it, it kind of fell by the wayside.
However, I will never forget that first conversation I had with Newport Beach/UCLA basketball legend John Vallely. He said the city was looking into raising the "fees" (read: taxes) involved with owning a commercial dock. He then started throwing out numbers that in no way could be true: a 20% tax/fee on gross income, a 20% tax/fee if you sell or refinance your marina property, and a 4% tax/fee if you try to improve your property through capital improvements.
If you own a business, after paying your federal and state income taxes, your payroll taxes and your sales taxes, could you imagine if you also had to pay another 20% tax on your gross income, not to the federal government, not to the state, not to the county, but to your city?
