Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire My Property Tax rant

You just said you didn't have a solution. Now you say it's not the best. What's better? Money has to come from somewhere.

Sales tax or census tax

Sales tax.

Not necessarily. If we didnt keep spending more and more each year, we wouldnt need to collect more and more.

In my county the school system feeds 20K kids two meals a day, through the summer and during breaks. They bus the kids in for a meal and send them home during the summer. They do this because of the number of hungry children, and as a way to keep the kids in a safer place than having them on the streets. Hungry children is a serious problem, however it is not the school systems problem. And they have now created a larger one: every one of the parents now feels like it is not their responsibility to feed their own damn kids. There is zero chance the county will ever back off of this program now, because now if the school went back to doing what a school does, it would seem like child abuse! Now its the schools fault if the kids are hungry! This costs a fortune, further contributes to the problem of parents not taking care of their kids, and grew the local government all in one move.

Threats. Our city had it on the ballot to repeal property tax this last year. So, the city basically sent out a mailer saying they'd make everyone's lives intentionally miserable if they couldn't tax us, even though the person who introduced the referendum proved that they wouldn't have to cut essential services and offered many options to balance the budget and eliminate waste. It was so ridiculous that I lost a lot of respect for those in "public" office.

I love consumptive taxes over property taxes. Let me choose the taxes I want to pay.

Sales Tax wouldn't work unless they make it at least state or nationwide, To cover schools and services it would be a pretty sizable tax and around here if done on a town by town or school district basis would result in alot of tax inequity There are some towns with big populations right next to empty/industrail towns. All the stores that could would just move to the empty industrial towns where fewer services are needed. The residential towns would what raise taxes even more to compensate?

Even state wide taxes would be problematic here, the states are small and lots of folks would cherry pick their shopping.


Even though it would never happen' I like the census tax idea, I also would be happy to see the national income tax turn into a national sales tax.

Sounds pretty European actually.

So, who do you think would pay more and who would pay less?

Two years ago in the county I live in a fire tax was passed and added to our property tax. This money is going to help out volunteer and even paid fire departments in the county. There is eleven total fire departments in my county and each one is getting around $75,000. The sad thing is the departments does not have to show where even one penny is spent. If the departments wants to buy each fire fighter a laptop computer for “training purposes” or even a lap dance for them it’s ok since they don’t have show what the tax money is being spent on. The fire tax cost me this year $110. In the past I would support my volunteer fire department when they would have a fund raiser, not any more. Now there is talk that each volunteer department is wanting to put a two man team to be at each station 24/7 and they will be paid for being at the stations. When my property tax goes up then the fire tax goes, it is not a fixed amount. I’m not against fire departments, I just don’t like this tax that was forced on me.

I put up a high tunnel a few years ago. It is basically a garden covered with a big piece of plastic. Mine is 30 by 96 feet. They are designed to last about 4 years, before the plastic has to be replaced and the ground has to be given a rest because of salt buildup from the fertilizer. The tax assessors office saw it, and was going to put a value of $30,000 on it, calling it a permanent greenhouse. I told them that just because it looked like a greenhouse, it was not, and that if they didn't want to take my word for it, call on the local Farm Service Agency, because it was their program that I'd used to build it. The tax woman said she'd check on it, and I told her that furthermore, if they taxed me on it, I'd make it an issue that every other garden in the country be taxed as well. I never heard back from her, and never had them add it to my tax bill.

I'd like to know what they could take away from me out here. I didn't really think about it too much until it was mentioned. But I have no public services out here except for the school system,..which nobody in this house participates in. I pay the privately owned electric company for my electricity,.....privately owned water company,..privately owned trash pickup,..I heat with propane and I have my own septic system.

The road that passes by my house it all that's provided.

This has always been my problem with property taxes. Say for instance, you purchase $100k worth of property, and either pay cash for it, or pay it off "free and clear" following a mortgage. Frankly, no matter what you do, you never OWN that property. You are merely renting it from the state and/or county government. Miss a $1k dollar tax payment on your $100k property, it automatically becomes the property of the government.

That's not ownership. That's a lease.

Frankly, I can't see how that's constitutional, but I'm no attorney.

I wonder if there was property tax (as we know it) at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified. You'd think they'd have prohibited it if it was, right in the Bill of Rights.

WHY THE FACK DO PEOPLE WITHOUT KIDS HAVE TO PAY FOR SCHOOLS?

just heard from my roofer. They tacked an additional $231 to my bill for the permit.

Now what value does my township provide me by charging me $231 for the right to put a new roof on my house.

I'm going to ask them that very question this afternoon

I see your point. But the township officials will tell you that they didn't charge you for the permit. They charged the roofing contractor for the permit.

Of course, the costs always get passed on to the consumer.

yep, but I still want to know what justifies $231?

A guy didn't come out and inspect it, I'm not afforded any additional warranties or guarantees because of it - so as far as I can tell, I paid indirectly $231 for them to fill out a piece of paper and put it in a filing cabinet. Seems pretty random to me at the moment.

Geez...

Permit for a roof here would cost me $50... And it would be ME, not the contractor.. BTDT.

I'll go you one better... why do people who are paying to educate their children totally out of pocket in a private school, saving the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars every year, have to pay school taxes while doing so?

Well, anymore, kids have to get an education so they can work to pay for your social security and medicare. They didn't elect the politicians that fugged it all up. We are leaving them a schit sandwich.

A person who consumes more will pay more, while a person who consumes less will pay less. You can't possibly be retarded enough to ask that question yet have enough intelligence to figure out how to post on a forum.