Posted on 02/22/2017 9:22:26 AM PST by Kaslin
Since the dawn of human civilization, governments have relied on property taxes to pay for public services.
In ancient Egypt, the pharaoh’s tax collectors levied taxes on individuals’ grain, oil, livestock, and land. When Alexander the Great conquered the world more than 2,300 years ago, he established administrators to assess local property taxes in the communities he ruled over, with some of the more troublesome nations paying more as a penalty for their disobedience. European monarchs would later assess their own property taxes, which, on occasion, led to full-scale wars between wealthy land-owning rivals. The British property tax system would eventually develop into something comparable to what we see in America today, and the Founding Fathers of this nation accepted the existence of property taxes as normative and necessary for the development of a proper society.
Government taxes are not inherently immoral. In fact, taxes are a necessary part of a functioning community. Without taxes, there would be no way to fund police or fire departments, the military, or necessary government agencies.
However, property taxes are fundamentally different than other forms of taxation. Use taxes, such as tolls, require only those people actually using a service to pay taxes. Income taxes and sales taxes apply levies on the transfer of wealth. Some taxes, such as Social Security taxes, are applied in exchange for a future benefit (assuming Social Security survives, of course).
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
So many of the little people though like property taxes because they think “the rich pay”. Many are unaware that such taxes are included in their monthly mortgage payments.
I’ve been saying this for years. People don’t seem to know that there is nowhere in this country that you can own property. Ever.
Lots of property taxes and I still run into the same potholes
I just paid off a tax lien on a property. For $762 I bought a semi run down house and an acre of cleared land. In 3 years I can get clean title.
You got that right. I don’t have kids but for my adult life I have been paying the school tax for all the apartment dwellers and illegal immigrant kids in Gwinnett County. They far outnumber private homes.
I don’t mind paying the school tax because we have to educate our youth but it should be through the local sales tax. Let everybody pay.
But why should renters get a free pass? Why should I as a property owner pay for the education of the masses? A wheel tax or sales tax is the way to get everyone to pay into the coffers.
Kentucky is one of the worst states in the south for taxes, they tax everything coming and going and still can’t meet their budgets easily. And Tennessee a no income tax state has nice surpluses year in and year out.
I live on the border with TN and many Kentucky residents will buy a lot on the lakes in TN and tag their vehicles over there to avoid the odious property tax Kentucky places annually on their vehicles.
Property tax is a wealth tax. Not much of any other way to tax Gigolo JF’nK and the Kennedys.
I dunno about that. The houses they bought en masse after world war II are TINY. They shouldn’t have to move.
Nevada, and maybe some other states, used to have what are called allodial property rights. Property owners could elect to pay a number of years worth of property tax in advance or somesuch and be done with them forever.
The problem generally is, that everyone is getting nickle and dimed to death. Without limits, taxation will inexorably increase over time, to reach 100%, or more. We need to get back to the fact that no-one has the right to another mans labor.
I think most people would agree with that. The question is how to limit taxation, and of course how much. 10% sounds like a reasonable compromise.
No person can have more than 10% of their wealth or income taxed say. Federal, state, and local. “Here’s my 10%... you guys fight it out..” ;)
Obviously a Poll Tax.
Property taxes are a reminder that you do not own any real property in the US. ALL land in the US belongs to the respective local, state, and ultimately the federal government. US residents just rent land from the government. If you stop paying that rent (i.e. taxes), you get kicked off of that land.
This has been the status quo for millenia.
The serfs pay the king's tax if they want to live on the king's land.
My only complaint is income tax. I moved here from Seattle. High property taxes and sales tax but no income tax.
Also, renters don’t get a pass. The market sets rent based on a host of factors, one of which is any expenses the landlord pays, like taxes. I live fairly close to Columbia, btw.
>> I would like to see property taxes eliminated for your primary residence. Once someone pays for their home and is retired, they should have a secure place to live.
I totally agree. Anything else is like paying extortion to the government for “allowing” you to live in your own home.
Protection racket is exactly right.
Great post.
“The government taxes you simply because you have something that is perceived to be valuable.”
[Forgive me if my brief description below is too brief, too incomplete and leaves anything important out.]
Value? That is not exactly the whole case that leads to property taxes becoming a “norm”, nor is it the only case that could (whenever) be made for favoring them. They are direct, easy to administer, easy to get collected and as a system, more stable because they don’t rely on indirect and “economic activity” taxes like sales and income taxes. That is not an argument about “right” and “wrong”. It’s just that regardless of “value” they are an administratively convenient tax.
What is really most wrong with the property tax is NOT that they are a direct tax per local resident.
The “morally” wrong things about them are that they are based on “property value” and not flat universal rates regardless of “property value”, and that they are assessed in part for services (schools, for instance) not used by every individual taxpayer they are assessed against.
We can make them completely a “user fee” type by not charging property owners for the costs of local services they do not use. People without children would not pay local “school taxes”, and if a state wanted to help local schools beyond local revenues they would do so with state general taxes, not relying on property taxes on homes without children.
That leaves local services the general local public uses (could use, may use, is available to be used) - local government administration, courts, police, fire & emergency, local streets, drainage, water & sewer systems.
Those things individually and collective have costs, no matter what the “property values” are. Those facts illustrate that “property values” should not be needed to assess user fees/taxes for them.
It does not take rocket science to use specifics of the services - miles of streets (or sidewalks too), administration of local government, miles of water & sewer lines, ect., ect., to add them all up for the whole town, and apply them proportionately “per property unit”, with some adjustment for some property differences (road frontage, # of water-using outlets or sewage contributing units), from collective totals to proportionate units per property.
Some costs would require no adjustment to apportion them as they should be understood as “equal” per property unit period - such as general local administration, police, fire & emergency, courts and the like. Streets & sidewalks and some other “services” could have some adjustments applied them which raise or lower the % of “use” they represent - such as street/road frontage, for instance.
Then how that system is made more moral is it is detached from the property value, because property value is not a variable in determining a property’s proportion of the tax, and then the tax does not go up or down based on property value; it merely reflects the allocation of the fixed-and-approved locality-cost budget.
If THAT is the only way localities could tax, they would wind up being more frugal instead of expecting to simply bleed everyone more based on “property values”.
OMG the Marxist’s will shout, ‘cause the family with a $175,000 house will pay the same as the one with the $450,000 dollar house, and maybe much more if the residents of the $450,000 house have no children and thus pay none of the school taxes. But isn’t the local administration, police, emergency & fire protection, courts, ect., of “equal” value to all residents, regardless of “property value”??
[It gets a little complicated to factor this system’s application with both multi-family and mixed-use properties together with single-family & normal commercial properties (but, again, doing so does not take rocket science - any good actuary could figure it out)].
In terms of a more moral tax system and one that makes it harder for localities to beef up their expenses just bleeding the higher “property values”, this “flat” tax “user fee” type property tax system would be a good thing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.