Property Tax Revolution in North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan

Townhall.com ^ | March 26, 2012 | Mike Shedlock

[wintertime]

Sucks to live in a house that’s paid off but I still have to pay for it or face losing it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Absolutely! Property taxes are never paid off. The government is always the landlord. And...Yeah! It sucks!

Personally, my husband and I, when we retired, sold our condo and moved to the county with the cheapest property taxes in the state (likely the nation) and bought much less house than we could afford. We live comfortably but modestly. The primary reason was so that we could avoid property taxes.

Two things just bug me about property taxes and I am exasperated that other conservative fail to “get it” :

1) The principle that one can never really be the owner of the property. The government is **always** the landlord.

2) Most property taxes go to support a socialist-entitlement of government schooling that is utterly godless in socialist cultural, political, and religious worldview. Children **will** learn to think and reason godlessly. They must just to cooperate in the classroom. How could it be otherwise. And...Children risk learning to be comfortable with socialism. Why? Because any government and voting mob that is powerful enough to give them tuition-free socialist schooling is powerful enough to give them **lots** of “free” stuff.

[gibsosa]

Bump to that!

[Regulator]

You both had interesting answers, certainly didn't know about the land reserved in townships for schools.

Sorta puts the lie to "the schools will collapse if we don't have huge property tax". It's really about cash for the overseer class...

I don't think that utopian thinkers in the 19th century really understood what they were unleashing with the Free Schools movement. It was all well intentioned.

But the looter class once again sensed an opportunity. Give us your money, or we take your land. And you can't get rid of us, because we ARE the government, the unelected part of it, and we OWN the elected guys.

People say it can't be stopped. Well, we can try.

[Sequoyah101]

As said, as long as there are property taxes you never actually own what you have earned and acquired. It is clear that you can be taxed out of you home and “possessions”.

Here in Texas the assessment boards have lost touch and simply don’t care about right or wrong. It is all about generating revenue from on of the only sources they have since there is no state income tax.

How can it possibly be right, reasonable or good for a person with no income or diminished income to owe taxes on property that is bought and paid for that he can’t afford to pay? How is it right to say that he must sell and move down scale? Sounds like confiscation to me.

Oklahoma, think twice about eliminating state income tax.. the money for services has to come from somewhere. The real question should be what is really needed?

One of the real evils is baseline budgeting with automatic inflation increases. Bureaucrats forget that they don’t run their homes that way.

[noinfringers2]

I believe most property related taxes have an element of direct benefit supported by the property owner for services to be rendered and an element of feely-goody taxes promoted by citizen gad-flies who believe it is their societal if not God’s desire that all people no matter how deserving must be supported, in or out of government. Taxes are a creation of people.

[jammer]

Michigan had better do something instead of harassing the taxpayers they do have.

In late February, I got a notice from Lansing that I owed $326 more for an error on my 2008 state income tax. Instead of spending more than that retrieving records, having the accountant fight it, etc., I sent the money. The next day, I got a demand for all the tax returns I supposedly hadn't filed for the years 2008 - 2010! So, I had made a mistake on a return that I didn't file!

This is on top of ludicrous demands the past several years that the state has made for tax deposits they didn't receive (until I gave receipts), etc.

My solution: dissolve the corporation and move, which I just completed. Loss of not many employees or taxes, but it's part of the death by 1,000 cuts.

To hell with Michigan.

[jammer]

You are correct that we never own land in property tax states; we only lease it from the state.

But it's not the TYPE of taxes that is necessarily the problem. It's the unlimited (and unfathomable) obligations the states have taken and the voracious appetite for revenue from any place they can find it that is the problem.

[BobL]

“property taxes are a crime....i watch my wifes grandparents lose their little cottage on a lake (prior to michigans headlee amendment) people started buying up the little cottages and building very large mansion type homes on the lake...”

Yea, here in Texas we freeze property taxes when you turn 65. We figure it makes more sense to keep old people in houses that are much, much, bigger than they need (since the kids are gone), and make the young families live like crap, having to cover a growing portion of their (the old peoples’ reduced) property tax.

We call that ‘fairness’ here.

[101stAirborneVet]

the voters of North Dakota will have the opportunity to make North Dakota truly 'Legendary', as the first to pass a state constitutional amendment that will abolish the property tax, prioritize spending by the legislature, and finally give local governments something they never had: true local control over spending

I hadn't heard about this. This is completely awesome. I live in Vermont, where property taxes are 10x higher than most other states. The money goes to a million feel-good lib programs, and most of the roads are impassable and poorly maintained.

I fear for our nation in so many ways, but I'm always so happy to see that so many are trying to get things back under control.

[PGalt]

The only alternative to be considered should be the cutting of spending.

BUMP!

DEFUND socialist collectives, foreign and domestic.

live - free - republic...VERY low-taxed, prosperous, free.

[Mark17]

In CA this would quickly be invalidated by the courts...even before it was voted on.

Yes it would, and I was born and raised in North Dakota. The only reason I have never gone back, is because of the cold weather. Other than that, I would have left California already.