Which is all fine and dandy, except when you start to accumulate it. I guess you can literally pay for stuff "in cash".
I don't think property taxes should apply unless you have more than one home/tract of land or a single home worth more than say 300,000 (with exceptions for gentrification). It just irks me that you can never truly own your paid off modest house.
It's my situation but I'd like to think my views wouldn't change were I more prosperous. It just seems unconscionable that someone could be evicted from their reasonable home simply for an inability to pay taxes. I have fewer objections to wage garnishments and such.
There are no homes for 300k in my area. You would need to set some metric that accounts for geography.
I bought my house a couple of years before the housing market shot through the roof. My taxes at the time were based on what I bought the house, not terrible, but not good either. The peak of the boom, my house value almost tripled, maybe less, but my assessed value was way more than i bought it for. A lot of people started losing their homes over taxes, so they came up with the save our homes law, which saved my ass. Right now, my escrow payment is more than my principle and interest, but back then my escrow almost killed us, we were on the verge of selling our house.
Yes, people that own homes in an area that starts to prosper or gets gentrified should have laws that save the owners of the homes currently from getting it up the ass. Saw in Florida a few years ago where elderly people had been living in a home for decades could no longer live there because of taxes. I think, like you said, a law quickly went through that saved them. You cannot have a floor for taxes like this though. Poor neighborhoods would have no public schools. People that rent out homes might do their best to artificially keep values of the area down, etc. It just wouldn't be feasible. It is part of living in a civilized world. And, in reality, that land is never 'owned' wholly by you. It is still State and ultimately Federal land, and can be taken by eminent domain.
Should that change because you have a more expensive house? Why is it any more right that they can lose a home they ve paid for to taxes but some one with a home worth less shouldn't?
The person with a large house could in theory sell his property to pay the taxes and buy a smaller place whereas the person with more limited resourses may not have recourse for such? Ultimately I'm largely agnostic on matters of taxation and economics due to my poor capacity to grasp complex and abstract concepts and my limited attention span. All I can really do is talk about how I feel, and it sure feels like our society creates needless hardships and burdens on the many in order to preserve every penny held by the precious handful of people and corporations (also people) that control everything.
Sure you could. I could sell my 200k house tomorrow and buy one for 150 if needed. I wouldn't limit that option to those with a house worth "x" and above. If I can't pay my taxes (after I have paid my home off) and believe the government shouldn't have the right to take my land and home due to taxes It would be hard for me to say they should take anyone's under the same circumstances regardless of worth.
I think everyone here understands your objection, but they don't like your proposed solution. Where I am, nothing sells for less than 300K (northern Virginia/DC). There are very poor people living in buildings/houses that are rent-controlled because otherwise they'd be out on their ass. And you can't expect an owner with rent-controlled property to be paying full tax value. I get what you are saying and whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment. Perhaps the property tax should get locked in after a certain number of years until the property changes hands.
I don't like to pay them, but of all the taxes I complain about, I can at least see where these are spent.
Some places up north lock in property taxes to land value upon purchase. I see pro's and cons to that approach.
here in california we have prop 13 which only increases your taxes by like 2% a year or whatever. therefore people like my in laws who have owned a house for 30 years are paying a fraction of what i'm paying for a similar priced house and even my accessed value is half what my real value is because i bought at the bottom of the market. i'm not sure it's a better system frankly. they have to get the taxes from somewhere anyway. i'd much rather have higher property taxes and lower income taxes.
