Other suggestions don’t go far enough. Start by passing a law prohibiting Property Tax outright for everyone across any assets. And push for a constitutional amendment banning it forever at every level of government.
Property tax violates the Pursuit of Happiness (property) because you never actually own your property. Property tax is unconstitutional.
18 Likes
The government provides a service. As such we should seek to connect the money it takes to the service it provides as much as possible. If it were easy, it wouldn’t need to be a Govt service at all. And so it’ll inevitably be the case that whether it be via income, sales, or even tariffs , taxes will be somewhat progressive. In that the more money you have and spend you’ll pay more in taxes, but get the same service. This is fine as long as it doesn’t go to far. As it maintains the central concept of basically paying money for a service. You’re inherently participating in the act of being in society by making transactions. Via accepting or giving money for goods or services
Whats not fine is the extortion of being forced to pay money to exist. And this must be ended
1 Like
One common example communists like to use to support these taxes is owning a car. Wherein the property tax goes towards maintaining the roads.
But this is never the only way. Leaving aside the obvious example of toll roads to better connect the service to the cost. If that’s not practical, taxes on gas, or in the future perhaps electricity is a perfectly sensible way to raise money for maintenance. Like the App Store taking a cut of every transaction because theyre maintaining this larger structure that supports the lower level apps. The govt is maintaining a larger physical network that we all exist in. So in participating in society via transactions the govt takes a cut.
But in the case of property taxes it happens regardless of participation or use of services. My car is just sitting their in the garage. Or like on a house, you can imagine being totally self sufficient living out in the woods with solar energy and you still owe the government for some reason.
I imagine beaurcrats want the money to do more with it via the govt, and there in make more money and elevate themselves. Which is whatever, basically how companies work as well. And in the case of transactional taxes so be it. They can push for whatever and people will support it if the service is worthwhile or they won’t as the case may be. But with property tax it’s more insidious. Theyre forcing you to participate in society. Because these communists just can’t accept it if people want to be left alone. And that’s deeply un-American.
1 Like
And yes I’m sure it’s rich people that pay the most in property taxes but no it’s not them I’m most concerned about with this. They can sell a big house and downsize to more modest living if need be. But everyday people can’t just easily downsize from a single family home if they can’t pay their property taxes one year, for whatever reason. Here’s one big way we can enable a real social safety net better. Let people secure their own safety net better.
duplicated with End property taxes! - #95 by Bastid
1 Like
The best objection to this would be the monopoly boardgame, but I don’t think property tax is the solution. Going without any kind of disincentive toward monopolistic acquisition is equally frightful, however.
I think the best solution would be one similar to what’s in the Bible: something like a Jubilee every 50 years. To what default owners would the land revert to? I don’t know. But there has to be something to reset monopoly with land ownership specifically.