Do you really 'own' land? (realty, property taxes, legal, claim)
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But why property tax? Do larger, more expensive houses use more roads, fire, community services than a smaller, less expensive house? Why not a flat tax per head to cover those services?
Why pay sales tax as a percentage? Just a flat fee for anything you buy: clothes, gas, book, house, car, yacht, airplane, island etc. What would be a fair tax for everything listed? It just doesn't make sense to have flat fee property tax.
But why property tax? Do larger, more expensive houses use more roads, fire, community services than a smaller, less expensive house? Why not a flat tax per head to cover those services?
I am all for it! Then I will pay the same tax for my $10m, 20,000 sq ft mansion as the guy on the other side of town who lives in a 900 sq ft, $40K bungalow. Sounds fair to me (not to him).
I am all for it! Then I will pay the same tax for my $10m, 20,000 sq ft mansion as the guy on the other side of town who lives in a 900 sq ft, $40K bungalow. Sounds fair to me (not to him).
What Blazer in post 15 says is interesting.....regardless of the size of the house, if its burning, the fire dept still has to start up the engines of their trucks and show up at the house. Its still the same process regardless of the size of the house. Now, the larger house might use more water (or not) but how much does water cost? Im sure the owner of the 20k sq foot house would love to pay the same property tax as the 900 sq foot house and just foot the bill for the water (instead of paying in advance) should he ever need to use the services of the fire dept.
Why do people that earn more pay more in income tax? Do they use more "fill in the blank" than anyone else?
I'd say yes, they do. Just in general, I look at what kind of a footprint each of us leaves on the earth. Much of that footprint is due simply to HOW we live. How modest (or not) is our housing? How wasteful are we? Do we make an attempt to conserve natural resources? How much fossil fuel do our vehicles consume? Etc., etc.
Now it's certainly possible that very wealthy people could make a small footprint. Howard Hughes was incredibly rich but for most of his life he was a hermit. Not such a big footprint. The Duggars have a ton of kids, therefore they need an enormous house and multiple vehicles. They consume mountains of food, they use more clothes, appliances, electronics, toys, etc., so their footprint is enormous — although they probably aren't what I would call rich. But in general the bigger footprint is using more infrastructure and resources.
Look at all the things wealthy individuals have and use (and even claim they "need") because of the mere fact they are rich. I had a boss once who had memberships in a whole passel of very expensive country clubs. He claimed he "needed" them for entertaining clients. But couldn't his clients all have been entertained in the same country club over and over? Similarly you can only drive one car at a time, but does that stop people from buying multiples when they can afford them? You can only live in one house at a time, but rich people often have many. John McCain wasn't even sure how many his family owned.
All of the resources we make use of — or totally consume — are tied to the things that are paid for by our income taxes. The biggest item in our national budget is the military. We fight wars because we need oil. We would need less oil if people had fewer cars and they were carbon neutral vehicles (something that could happen if we actually had the will). When you have a lot of houses you are using way more electricity per person than poor people are using, requiring infrastructure growth. When we consume tons of goods they have to be shipped all over the country, requiring a more elaborate highway system than we might need if we weren't such dedicated shoppers and consumers. In general, the rich are using more of these things than the poor. They should pay more taxes.
First-world consumers want new, new, new all the time. Our Federal income taxes pay for science and technology development. We need an educated populace. Some of these taxes go to education, especially higher education. We always want medicine and hospitals to cure our diseases. Our Federal taxes pay for improvements in medical care. In general, the more money someone has the more likely they are to be using those resources. Rich people usually get more education. They use more technology. They live longer than poor people for a reason: they get more medical attention and more and better drugs. Again, they should pay more taxes.
Federal income taxes go to national parks. I don't know too many kids of low-income families who get to see them. When corporations or very wealthy people are crime victims, aren't they more likely to get more Federal law enforcement assistance than individuals we never heard of?
Just think about one very high profile family we got to know recently. They have dressage horses. It takes some serious infrastructure to build their stables and provide these expensive animals with care: roads, water systems, electricity systems, etc., paid for by tax dollars. One of those horses was shown in the Olympics, an event funded in part by U.S. taxpayers. Do I have dressage horses? No. So the owners of dressage horses should have to pay more income tax than I do.
I believe that sales taxes are among the fairest of taxes, so long as food and essentials are exempted. People who buy a lot of stuff can afford a lot of stuff. Luxury taxes are especially fair in my opinion. A yacht leaves a footprint on our waterways. People who can afford a yacht should pay extra taxes to compensate for the damage they are doing. If you buy a Ferrari your sales tax will be more than someone who can only afford a Ford Focus. That seems fair to me. Yet in our current system, someone who owns a private jet gets a tax BREAK. Fair? Not in my opinion.
What's also not fair? Incredibly wealth corporations that pay NO income tax. From 2008-11, 30 wealthy companies were Federal income tax negative (meaning some even got refunds), despite $205 billion in pretax U.S. profits. Overall, those 30 enjoyed an average effective federal income tax rate of –3.1% over the four years. General Electric, Boeing, Verizon, and Amazon are just a couple of them. But they sure do have enough money to pay lobbyists and make campaign donations.
Good point, which is amplified by the fact that people who earn more pay more in absolute $ and a higher percentage of their income.
Anyway, my comment was due to the fact that people said property taxes go back to the community/ schools.
Understood
However, the 30 acre plot with a 3 BR house with two occupants, one car, pays more than his neighbor with a 1/4 acre 3 BR house with 6 occupants, 4 in school and 3 cars.
Services of the municipality is what property taxes are supposed to pay for,
If you have unpaid electric bill, you lose that service...not your home.
If you have unpaid property taxes you don't lose the services, you lose your property.
Should people with no kids not pay any taxes that go towards schools? No cars not pay taxes that go towards roads? Should every single service someone uses be paid at the point of use?
Should people with no kids not pay any taxes that go towards schools? No cars not pay taxes that go towards roads? Should every single service someone uses be paid at the point of use?
Well, that would be most "fair," and least practical.
The real issue is too many able folks who want more out of the kitty than they put in, whether for themselves or their cronies, and crummy politicians who cater to that character weakness, amplified by taxation supported only by promoting covetousness.
Ownership of land is intimately related to the repressive apparatus of the state that supports your claim with using all deadly arsenal of the state. You have no natural right to own land just because you have a piece of paper, paid money for it, or you say it's yours. SAME with a car and your underwear. You pay sales tax, do you? That's your "protection" payments. In the past ownership of land was communal, but even tribes had to fight to protect their turf (and grab other'). Animals must use their claws and teeth to protect their turf, until finally old age/injury/starvation etc. would allow competitors to "move in".
To put it simply, ownership of land is expropriation of the common resource that no human being can accomplish on his/her own. You either have an army of the private thugs protecting your claim (can't support that on 5 acres) or you pay protection money to the state that holds monopoly on the legalized violence and death. Simple and kinda fair.
Just imagine I own not 19 acres but 1,900,000 acres and I say to everybody else "get lost, it's mine forever tax free". Is it fair? More "philosophical" question - is ownership of large chunks of land fair even if you pay tax? Under "fairness" I understand natural order of things. No person can own 1,900,000 acres in the "wild" using his own teeth and claws. So if you own huge chunks of land, the rest of society is working hard to protect your claim, society is working hard so we (society) would have 1,900,000 acres less to use and enjoy. That's not only unfair, it's stupidly unfair.
Last edited by RememberMee; 12-02-2012 at 10:16 AM..
Should people with no kids not pay any taxes that go towards schools? No cars not pay taxes that go towards roads? Should every single service someone uses be paid at the point of use?
People with no children benefit from the schools (aside from their presumably having attended them themselves) by having a relatively educated populace with which to interact, do business, etc.
People who no cars benefit from the roads if they consume anything at all that roads were used to produce or bring to them. Even their house, unless it's built from wood and stone produced onsite and hauled with animals, was built using roads. Unless everything they eat is grown onsite rather than purchased at a grocery store, roads were used to bring it to the store where they purchase it.
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