I love the way POTUS Trump thinks. Now compare your local government officials salary with the salary of a US Cabinet officer and get back to me.
Why do we pay local officials so much money, yet our cities and counties are broke?
I posted this earlier:
income and property tax caps in the state and federal constitutions to protect the middle class are needed.
Let the Democrats in Congress vote against such proposed constitutional amendments.
The mid terms may have a very atypical outcome.
But...but...but... that will make it impossible for the thieves in government to steal our property!
[from long ago]
My Suggestion for Residential Real Property Taxation Reform
Currently residential real estate is predominantly taxed based on its estimated market value.
Ad valorum taxation stems from the colonial era when an acre of land far from the Atlantic Ocean was worth less than an acre of land near the Atlantic Ocean. Ad valorum taxation made sense when getting agricultural goods from the hinterlands to coastal city markets was very difficult and expensive.
In 2021, ad valorum taxation creates a great incentive for local governments and others to make residential real estate very expensive. This is clearest in California, where it may cost $700,000 to add a new apartment to the housing stock in San Francisco. When housing becomes prohibitively expensive, massive homeless problems result. Ad valorum taxation creates a lot of misery.
I feel that the taxation of a residential property should be roughly proportional to the governmental costs of the services likely to be provided to its residents.
What I propose is to tax residential property primarily based on the square root of its enclosed space in square feet.
A 700 square foot apartment would be assessed at 26.45 tax units, a 1,400 square foot split-level house at 37.42 tax units and a 3.500 square foot mansion at 59.16 tax units.
The square footage would be measured based on the ground level foundation/slab perimeter of the structure for ease of tax assessor access and calculation.
A 4,000 square foot Capitol Hill townhouse having a 1,000 square foot basement apartment and 3,000 square foot owners’ space would be taxed based on each housing unit, 31.62 tax units and 54.77 tax units, respectively.
A 12,000 square foot apartment building with 12 apartments of various sizes would be taxed on its average unit size, i.e. at 12x31.62 tax units.
Balconies and partially enclosed areas such as carports would be taxed based on one-fourth of their square footage and other unheated/unfinished enclosed areas such as garages and cellars based on one-half their square footage, which may be calculated from building plans.
Enclosed areas would be measured internally and 75% and 50% reductions subtracted from the total square footage.
The public road-fronting footage of the property would be taxed as well at .02 tax units per linear foot, doubled on the first 100. If the property within a subdivision doesn’t front on a public road, the public road frontage shall be apportioned to all the properties in the subdivision at least 50% within the taxing jurisdiction.
The calculations of a tax assessor accurate to within one tax unit overall shall be definitive.
I proposed this for a possible constitutional amendment in the past:
Levies on any residential property of less than 2799 square feet of finished living space shall be no higher than the 2019 dollar amounts for the property, or for a newer or since resold property no higher than what it would have been levied at for 2019 if it lacked owner specific tax breaks, increased by 3% per calendar year since 2019 and by any percentage increase to its finished living space.
I like that
And before the election I proposed:
Federal taxation on personal income shall be capped as follows:
below 20% of the median federal full-time civilian employee compensation amount, 10%,
below 50% of the median federal full-time civilian employee compensation amount, 22%,
below the median federal full-time civilian employee compensation amount, 30%,
below the average federal full-time civilian employee compensation of the 100,000 largest recipients, 35%,
below the average federal full-time civilian employee compensation of the 10,000 largest recipients, 40%.
Note 1: All percentages to include employee FICA and self-employment tax as they are income taxes.
Note 2: These are very close to the combined (1040 + employee FICA & Medicare) personal income tax rates now levied.
Note 3: Anything that the IRS would as of January 1, 2024 legally be able to collect income tax on if provided to any person would be considered compensation.
I noted at the time:
Fighting now in Congress to send middle-class income and property taxation cap constitutional amendments to the states would add the electors of several deep blue states to Trump’s total and make Congress turn deep red come November.
“No Child Left Behind”
Department of Education
Title I
school busing
Brown vs. Board of Education
Ohhhhh…..
The Democrat Party just had a seizure.
Property taxes falls under the 10th amendment of county control. Feds have no say.
That means I can afford to live where I want!
There are a couple other angles to this.
First property tax is a tax on unrealized gains and it is a tax on inflation.
Second, think about this. Some dink in local government works(?), gets paid, and pays an income tax on its labor. Once.
A homeowner who builds his own house gets taxed on his same labor year after year after year.
Fed Gov has no business in this .
States rights, they decide, not DC.
Most states use property tax to finance teachers union bosses & administrators lavish salaries & life styles with some small portion going to kids just so they can ask for more in the next fiscal year.
Why do we pay local officials so much money.
They want to make sure you never own your house (taxes) even if you pay it off.
Repo man standing by
Trump is right
While failing by any possible definition of the word, public school administrators consistently give themselves raises via collusion with the tax assessors.
In a lot of places, everyone in on the scam (school and hospital administration in Texas, along with tax officials) will see no tax increases while normal property taxpayers are getting raped by the tax assessors year after year.
All it takes is one property in a county selling at an exhorbitant price and everyone gets destroyed.
Property tax is a tax on unrealized gains. Most don’t have the gray matter to know what that is.
Our Founding Fathers would be angry, very angry. That said, I have been successful in the past three years in winning my appeals against my County Tax Nazis….has saved me $6-7 thousand over three years.
Hint: DO NOT challenge their comps, a losing game.
Well I love the idea but I presume to pay for local police, fire, schools, well, the money has to come from somewhere. I certainly don’t want it all federalized.
It boils down to the fact that the country has become a nation of predominately takers, and the few remaining givers are continually called on to give more. It should be the way the country started with only stakeholders (land owners) having the right to vote. Now more and more lazy people just sit on their rears and vote to take more and more from the working stiffs.