"Pat Flannery" wrote in message
...
Man-hours.

A fairly Marxist concept of labor, when you come right down to it, and
entirely independent of costs in a monetary sense.

Many years ago, Florida decided to tax services, including construction. The
state simply decided that 1/4 of the cost of a house was labor, and taxed
appropriately. On the other hand, because my dad pretty much stuck to one of
two models with limited changes and so could could almost make kits (less
than 10% of the lumber needed to be cut on site), his actual labor cost was
less than 17%. He almost had to go to court to get the court to stop
overcharging his customers. The state refused to believe he could sell
houses so inexpensively that they sent an inspector to see how he was
cheating. The inspector bought a house, and the tax was eventually dropped.