Monday, January 25, 2010

If Garrett Ran the World: Property Taxes

I believe that in LA County everyone pays 1.25 percent of the assessed value of their home which for me and Tasha is about $5625 per year which is due in equal installments in November and February. Now lets say we did some major improvements on our house...so nice remodel, spruced it up real nice...added some major square footage etc...What we have done is increased the property value of our home, and increased the value of everyones property in the neighborhood. You would think that by doing this we would be rewarded? But that is not the way it happens, if you improve your house, you actually are punished in the form of more property taxes. So good behavior is punished.

On the flip side of that coin...if we let the house fall into disrepair our values would be lowered and we would be rewarded for this behavior in the form of lower property taxes...

So what they are doing to sum up is Punishing good behavior, and rewarding bad....

Ladies and gentleman, if Garrett Ran the world I would have an independent county assessors office who would take a look at all properties and give tax breaks to those that have improved their homes, and maintained or approved the appearance with meticulous landscaping.

Yeah like that will ever happen....

1 comments:

Brett said...

Garrett,

What's funny is I love the very core ideas in this. You are more and more a libertarian all the time... stop punishing those who work hard and contribute and rewarding those who don't. I love it.

However, I would take a different approach. I would simply return to a variation of our founding principles. I think property taxes are the only (Federal) taxes we should pay and only those who pay should be allowed to vote.

I know, I know... the collective gasp! I am a barbarian... oh, okay... I'm a barbarian. But think about it. Corporations can't vote, so corporations can't be taxed, have no need to lobby, special interest dies (or is at least seriously wounded). People who don't (directly) pay property taxes can no longer vote every six months to increase property taxes so that schools can get another trillion dollars for six computers and a new Mercedes for the Superintendent (yes, I know renters indirectly pay increases in property taxes, but they don't seem to get it).

Here is the difference between the founding principle and what I am proposing. While I propose one vote per househould, I would not discriminate on the basis of gender.

But the principle is simple. No taxation without representation. No representation without taxation. If you can't vote, you don't pay taxes. If you don't pay taxes you can't vote.

Something tells me if this were the case (along with many things that go along with it), your property taxes would not be what they are (which by the way aren't going to the Federal Government anyway... they tax you sixteen thousand other ways... but don't worry if you work really, really hard and get ahead, you'll find yourself in a higher tax bracket...)

Harumph!