On Nov 5, 8:59*am, RHF wrote:


Now there is a proposal I can really get behind. Tax property on what is
actually PAID for it, not what some pencil pusher says it should be worth,
since the property owner isn't getting any more use out of the property than
he did when it was bought, major improvements notwithstanding, of course.

-aka- California's Prop 13

Uh, no, Prop 13 was introduced -and the campaign paid for- largely by
big business; who collectively designed it to take a huge chunk of the
property-tax burden off of *their* shoulders and shift it onto those
of California's middle-class wage-earners.

Here's how it works: Under prop 13, property tax assessments may not
be raised from the level they were at when 13 passed, but this only
applies to the folks (and corporations) who happened to already own
their property at that time. Anyone buying a new home, or buying one
that has been previously owned, is taxed at the present-day rates, and
their taxes are *not* frozen: they can be -and are- reassessed
regularly.

This means that the longer you've owned your property, the lower your
tax rates are as compared to those who've bought real-estate since
1978. And since nearly *all* homeowner-owned property has changed
hands one or more times since '78, comparatively few middle-class
homes are still being taxed at the low original rates, while the
really *huge* (and far more valuable) tracts of land owned by big
agribusiness and corporations such as the railroads are still paying
taxes at the 1978 rate, and their taxes will *never* go up.

So, since the property taxes of big businesses have essentially been
frozen ever since 1978, the middle-class new home buyer has assumed
more and more of the property tax burden as time has gone by, and will
assume even *more* of it in the future if nothing changes.

This is not exactly what you'd call a tax system designed to spread
the load equally, and help middle America.