Prosthetic Conscience

Zombie Food Pyramid

A revolution in fashion.

[ Posted: 14:47] | [ Category: /zombies] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]

Property Tax Madness

The current kerfluffle over property taxes in South Carolina is actually attracting some national attention, at least in the blogosphere. As usual, the ones complaining about class warfare are the ones busy practising it.

If the issue were just cutting taxes, it probably wouldn’t be a big deal. Everyone hates property taxes. They have a lot of unintended side-effects, such as encouraging landlords to let their properties fall into disrepair so as to lower their assessment, and encouraging land speculation. The fact that property taxes are used to fund education leads to inequalities in education. Property taxes are a bad thing.

But one tax that is worse than the property tax is the sales tax. Because people with lower incomes have to spend a larger proportion of their income than people with higher incomes, they pay a larger proportion of their incomes in sales taxes. Sales taxes are just another way the government takes from the poor and gives to the rich.

The reason that lawmakers are looking at property tax “reform” or “relief” right now is that assessments are too high, thanks to the housing bubble. The free market solution to all this would be just to let it alone: if property speculators find the cost of holding onto their properties too high, they should cash out now. People who own reasonable houses for their primary residences, rather than as investment vehicles will be protected by the homestead exemption once their property values drop to where they are supposed to be. The current tax cut plan is not a free market solution; it’s a bail-out for land speculators. If the government really wants to get involved, they should be addressing the cause (inflated valuations) rather than tinkering with the symptoms. The best way to do that would be to replace the current property tax system with a Land Value Tax. Land value taxes tax only the value of land, not of improvements, and discourage speculation, slumlordism, and suburban sprawl.

[ Posted: 12:12] | [ Category: /politics] | Permalink | Comments: 0 ]