Open Thread Mondays: New Taxes!

One of last week’s bigger victories in the New York State budget crisis came by way of death of Governor Paterson’s plans to change the New York State license plate. The plan would’ve required all car-owners to pay $25 to change their blue-and-whites for a hideous yellow-and-blue thing in order to generate $129 million for the state. But a successful petition at http://www.nonewplates.com helped stymie the governor’s senseless nickle-and-diming of state residents. The fight isn’t over, though. Paterson still holds the threat of the new fee over our heads by demanding that state legislators come up with other ways of filling state coffers. So here’s a brief list of new taxes and one-time fees we came up with to help our legislators out. What’ve you got?

• Birthing Fee: a one-time fee after the birth of a child. Residents can opt-out of paying this fee by donating their baby to chain-gang workforces that will help build roads and press license plates. (Increasing taxes on contraception will make this even more effective.)
• Bulk Condiments Tax: Since we have vice taxes on such unhealthy items like tobacco, alcohol, and junk foods, we should place similar taxes on consumers who believe they can eat a five-gallon jug of mayonnaise before it spoils.
• Prison Tax: If your offspring gets taken to jail you have to pay an annual tax for every year of incarceration to help the state confine and re-educate them since you did such a shitty job the first time around.
• Superfluous Door-Knocker Surcharge: For residents who have the gall to purchase ornamental knockers for an electric bell-equipped doorway, the owner shall be charged a fee every time a visitor uses both items and expends valuable energy that could be better spent paying taxes.
• Tax on Sodomy: Because the government likes sloppy seconds.