And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Saturday, August 31, 2024
Lots of options. One: after age 59, no property tax on your primary residence. No property tax before that can be more than one half percent.
Seems that I recall some area doing just that... and then putting a lien on the property for the unpaid taxes once the current owner dies. The devil truly is in the details.
Local governments prefer the flow of taxes to having to account for costs through user fees, or possibly discovering that nobody actually wants what they are stealing money for. Bottom line is that everything about property taxation is 100% socialist.
You'll still own one thing though: YOUR portion of the national debt and since you are the only one left working, it's all on YOU: $35 trillion. SO GET AT IT!
Property taxes are the most evil of all taxes. You don’t actually own anything, but you are renting it from the state (even when it’s paid off). “You will own nothing and be happy."
Mortgage was paid off decades ago, my property taxes now exceed what I paid monthly for the mortgage. From 40K to buy the place to 800k town tax assessment.
Some retired friends that jumped on the "home equity loan' BS years ago to finance luxury vacations or new cars are in desperate straits; high property taxes AND monthly finance charges.
Make this a political hot potato no poli tick would dare touch. Expect significant push back.
Once those poli ticks are out of office and replaced by others. Rinse and repeat. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseum.
Example: Proposition 13 passed in 1978 by overwhelming support. It put a cap on how much property could increase per year. Since then, poli ticks have tried to eliminate or restrict the limitations. They've used every trick in the book. It is an endless war. And that is only to limit the increase. To entirely eliminate the tax is another thing.
One method exists to end the matter right now and forever. It involves Pb poisoning.
Believe me, I tried it. I bought the book. I attempted to perfect allodial title but the yearly property tax bill keeps coming. There used to be a word that appeared in dictionaries long ago but is difficult to find anymore. This is from the original Webster's 1828:
"ALLODIUM: Freehold estate; land which is the absolute property of the owner; real estate held in absolute independence, without being subject to any rent, service, or acknowledgement to a superior. It is thus opposed to feudal. In England, there is no allodial land, all land being held of the King; but in the United States most lands are allodial."
All of that changed on March 9, 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt declared the United States bankrupt by and through executive order nos. 6073, 6102, 6111, and 6260. On April 26, 1933 came Senate Resolution no. 62 which reads in part: "The ultimate ownership of all property is in the State; individual "ownership" is only by virtue of Government, i.e., law, amounting to mere user; and use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the State." Actually, the Federal Reserve owns everything. The Fed holds the bankrupt United States in receivership. The Fed recruited the tattered remnants of our government to enforce the terms of the bankruptcy. We are only paying to use stuff we don't own. That's why your car gets towed away and held in ransom because of some administrative infraction of policy. You didn't harm anyone... your license expired and now you're walking home. The only Presidential contender I ever gave money to was Ron Paul. Read his book "End the Fed" if you want a clear picture of the problem.
Thanks, ghost. Just a bit of reflection and one can understand why Jefferson and Jackson fought so hard to prevent a national bank from ever happening. The current Fed is the same corporation that has been undermining nations and human sovereignty for hundreds of years. This is their perfect plan... the only way you can discharge a debt is to pay with the very confetti they are printing, Federal Reserve Notes. And these notes don't discharge a debt but actually compound it, with interest. Slavery perfected. Now all of us are down on the plantation picking cotton. The only way this problem will ever get fixed is the total abolition of the Fed, and thus their flying monkeys, the IRS, are destroyed too. You don't own anything, not even the clothes you're wearing because you paid for everything with FRNs.
I have a problem with school taxes for seniors. Especially since the local school district squanders money like it does. You make your voice heard and it goes no where. One of the many issues.
Lately, you make your voice heard and they take umbrage by arresting you for speaking out against them or more mildly placing your name on the jury duty list. Happened to me.
On taxes, in my state, once you hit 80, you are still taxed, however you can have the entire amount rebated. Of Coarse, you STILL have to pay the tax then apply for the rebate yearly.
I've got a couple years to go yet before I can gleefully cash those full reimbursement rebate checks. I get 10% back now just because I'm low income. Again, I have to pay the fully assessed tax amount then apply for a rebate every year. I also get a fixed amount veterans credit which they apply to the owed balance so the bill shows the net tax owed after they apply the credit. How nice of them.
If you're 66 in SC and have no children in public schools, you apply for the 4% Homestead Exemption by Jan. 15, a one time deal. If accepted, it reduces your property taxes by almost 70% and is permanent.
That's why HHI & Myrtle Beach are swarmed with low class (but rich) retired Yankees.
aint nothing gets me going more than dammm property taxes. you pay 'em and if you want to improve or add a building them jackasses charge you for that too.
Taxation is theft. Yes it is, and never mind the bullshit arguments over "greater good" or "public benefit" because those are all empty excuses for theft.
Agree with everyone else but I'd like to make one additional point. Politicians LOVE having multiple forms of taxation so that the average person doesn't see what they are paying in total. I wish we could limit them to a max of 2 forms of taxation (1 would be even better).
Without property taxes we'd have nobility again. Property taxes are a major reason why feudalism ended. Extremely wealthy people with huge estates would keep their untaxed lands out of production. No mining no timber, nothing. That's what they did, to keep hunting preserves and to stop us peasants from ever improving our lot
The problems are not in the method of taxation, it's our failure to control the way our political class and administrative classes spend the tax money.
"Property taxes are the most evil of all taxes." "Taxation is theft."
Ooohkay. Look, I value a libertarian philosophy as much as the next guy, but when I see comments like these I think of where I live. In this town we have, among other things, a police department, a fire department, and several schools. The cops, firemen, and teachers all expect to be paid for what they do. And their workplaces are equipped with things like police cruisers, fire trucks, and textbooks, all of which cost money. Without property taxes, where exactly do you expect the money for all this (and much more) to come from?
Somebody has to collect money to pay for all the town services and to administer them to see that they get done. I sure as hell don't want to volunteer to do this job and I suspect that the rest of you don't either. So we appoint other people to do it; we call them "politicians."
I realize that's an obscene word around here and that politicians, being human, are often crooks, thieves, and abusers of power. But they're doing a job that someone has to do, however badly, and at least in my small town context, live among us and so suffer the consequences of their own actions. Anyhow, what's your alternative?
Same thing with property taxes. If you know of a better way to pay for town services that you and everyone else benefits from I'd love to hear it. And if you want to cap them at some arbitrary low percentage, please tell me which services you want to do without: putting out fires? Catching crooks? Educating kids? Paving streets . . .?
You're right. Government having to struggle along on only sales tax, business tax, unemployment tax, self-employment tax, gas tax, excise tax, utility tax, road tax, pet tax, vehicle tax, alcohol tax, tobacco tax, boat tax, luxury tax, garbage tax, gift tax, estate tax, and a tax for being late on your taxes is just asking them to cut back too far.
Rick, I said nothing of the sort. Local government is a human institution and as such is subject to human flaws such as waste and graft. To think that all local officials are blameless, high minded public servants is silly, but it's equally ridiculous to paint them all as corrupt, greedy bloodsuckers. Do you actually know any of your locale's public officials? I know many in my town, and most of them are decent people who seem to care about their jobs and want to do them well. And even if I'm wrong about that I have the option to vote in local elections and replace them with people I like better. So do you. (You do vote in local elections, don't you?)
And Aesop, always a pleasure to hear from you. Most of the taxes you list go to the state, not local towns, and even if they did wouldn't generate enough revenue to run a town, which is why we have property taxes in the first place.
Anyhow, neither of you has answered my original question: if we get rid of property taxes what's your alternative? I assume you both want fire, police, public works, and water/sewer departments, etc. etc. (We'll leave schools to the side for now.) So how do you propose to pay for town services?
A lot of the country doesn't live in towns, thus paying for services they neither want nor need. Let the townies pay for their services, if they want them. Rural folks are on well water, septic systems, have volunteer FDs, and have maybe one Barney Fife per 50 sq. miles. Property tax on them is thus a total rip-off in return for nothing but the joy of being fleeced.
And the state takes a cut of it, then dribbles some back to the towns. Let's take them out of the discussion right off the bat.
Then homeowners will suddenly all be found just outside city limits, and the slumlords in town will just pass property taxes along to their tenants.
What does that look like IRL? Detroit, and D.C., for two easy examples. Two failed cities.
Just let one state ban property taxes forever, and see which way the moving vans are travelling 15 minutes later.
Texas does a "no property tax prorated by level of disability. So if you have a 100% disability , you pay no taxes. Sounds like a great idea, eh? But then all the 100% disability vets are living in my town that has a VA clinic and hospital. That means over 50% of the property is owned by folks that pay nothing to service the infrastructure or schools. And that responsibility falls to regular citizens like me. Unintended consequences of a well meaning program.
Me: Property tax should be illegal. Government: But then we couldn't pay for public schools! Me: Look, you've already sold me on this idea, you don't have to keep making a better case.
You endorse public schools? Really? The public school system was instigated by Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan. They wanted to nurture ignorant compliant slaves. 125 years later they've produced generations of ignorants who are now encouraged to question their gender and snitch on their parents. If the parents speak up they are arrested as domestic terrorists. How's all this working for you?
Seems that I recall some area doing just that... and then putting a lien on the property for the unpaid taxes once the current owner dies. The devil truly is in the details.
ReplyDeleteLocal governments prefer the flow of taxes to having to account for costs through user fees, or possibly discovering that nobody actually wants what they are stealing money for. Bottom line is that everything about property taxation is 100% socialist.
ReplyDeletePoliticians and taxes go hand in hand, to be rid of one you must exterminate the other.
ReplyDeleteBut that goes against Agenda 2030's insistence that you will own nothing! What kind of unGlobalist idea is this?!
ReplyDeleteYou'll still own one thing though: YOUR portion of the national debt and since you are the only one left working, it's all on YOU: $35 trillion.
DeleteSO GET AT IT!
Property taxes are the most evil of all taxes.
ReplyDeleteYou don’t actually own anything, but you are renting it from the state (even when it’s paid off).
“You will own nothing and be happy."
Mortgage was paid off decades ago, my property taxes now exceed what I paid monthly for the mortgage. From 40K to buy the place to 800k town tax assessment.
ReplyDeleteSome retired friends that jumped on the "home equity loan' BS years ago to finance luxury vacations or new cars are in desperate straits; high property taxes AND monthly finance charges.
Make this a political hot potato no poli tick would dare touch. Expect significant push back.
ReplyDeleteOnce those poli ticks are out of office and replaced by others. Rinse and repeat. Ad infinitum. Ad nauseum.
Example: Proposition 13 passed in 1978 by overwhelming support. It put a cap on how much property could increase per year. Since then, poli ticks have tried to eliminate or restrict the limitations. They've used every trick in the book. It is an endless war. And that is only to limit the increase. To entirely eliminate the tax is another thing.
One method exists to end the matter right now and forever. It involves Pb poisoning.
“ Make this a political hot potato no poli tick would dare touch.” I am so down with that!
DeleteBelieve me, I tried it. I bought the book. I attempted to perfect allodial title but the yearly property tax bill keeps coming. There used to be a word that appeared in dictionaries long ago but is difficult to find anymore. This is from the original Webster's 1828:
ReplyDelete"ALLODIUM: Freehold estate; land which is the absolute property of the owner; real estate held in absolute independence, without being subject to any rent, service, or acknowledgement to a superior. It is thus opposed to feudal. In England, there is no allodial land, all land being held of the King; but in the United States most lands are allodial."
All of that changed on March 9, 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt declared the United States bankrupt by and through executive order nos. 6073, 6102, 6111, and 6260. On April 26, 1933 came Senate Resolution no. 62 which reads in part: "The ultimate ownership of all property is in the State; individual "ownership" is only by virtue of Government, i.e., law, amounting to mere user; and use must be in accordance with law and subordinate to the necessities of the State." Actually, the Federal Reserve owns everything. The Fed holds the bankrupt United States in receivership. The Fed recruited the tattered remnants of our government to enforce the terms of the bankruptcy. We are only paying to use stuff we don't own. That's why your car gets towed away and held in ransom because of some administrative infraction of policy. You didn't harm anyone... your license expired and now you're walking home. The only Presidential contender I ever gave money to was Ron Paul. Read his book "End the Fed" if you want a clear picture of the problem.
As usual, good stuff Tom.
DeleteReading your comments is always a learning experience.
Thanks, ghost. Just a bit of reflection and one can understand why Jefferson and Jackson fought so hard to prevent a national bank from ever happening. The current Fed is the same corporation that has been undermining nations and human sovereignty for hundreds of years. This is their perfect plan... the only way you can discharge a debt is to pay with the very confetti they are printing, Federal Reserve Notes. And these notes don't discharge a debt but actually compound it, with interest. Slavery perfected. Now all of us are down on the plantation picking cotton. The only way this problem will ever get fixed is the total abolition of the Fed, and thus their flying monkeys, the IRS, are destroyed too. You don't own anything, not even the clothes you're wearing because you paid for everything with FRNs.
DeleteMost states fund their public schools with Property Taxes. A lot of older citizens have a problem with this since they do not have kids in school.
ReplyDeleteI have a problem with school taxes for seniors. Especially since the local school district squanders money like it does. You make your voice heard and it goes no where. One of the many issues.
DeleteLately, you make your voice heard and they take umbrage by arresting you for speaking out against them or more mildly placing your name on the jury duty list. Happened to me.
DeleteOn taxes, in my state, once you hit 80, you are still taxed, however you can have the entire amount rebated. Of Coarse, you STILL have to pay the tax then apply for the rebate yearly.
I've got a couple years to go yet before I can gleefully cash those full reimbursement rebate checks. I get 10% back now just because I'm low income. Again, I have to pay the fully assessed tax amount then apply for a rebate every year. I also get a fixed amount veterans credit which they apply to the owed balance so the bill shows the net tax owed after they apply the credit. How nice of them.
Nemo
If you're 66 in SC and have no children in public schools, you apply for the 4% Homestead Exemption by Jan. 15, a one time deal. If accepted, it reduces your property taxes by almost 70% and is permanent.
DeleteThat's why HHI & Myrtle Beach are swarmed with low class (but rich) retired Yankees.
Assessed value should be the price the local government must purchase the price at if you wish to sell and cannot find a buyer
ReplyDeleteLocal superintendent of schools(Livermore Valley Unified) knocks down $450k. Taxes ain’t going down.
ReplyDeleteProperty tax of one half percent and they will just "assess" a higher "value" to your home so they can take in more taxes.
ReplyDeleteaint nothing gets me going more than dammm property taxes. you pay 'em and if you want to improve or add a building them jackasses charge you for that too.
ReplyDeleteTaxation is theft.
ReplyDeleteYes it is, and never mind the bullshit arguments over "greater good" or "public benefit" because those are all empty excuses for theft.
Agree with everyone else but I'd like to make one additional point. Politicians LOVE having multiple forms of taxation so that the average person doesn't see what they are paying in total. I wish we could limit them to a max of 2 forms of taxation (1 would be even better).
ReplyDeleteI resent income taxes because they're so badly spent but I don't mind my property tax that supports Sheriff's Office, Road Department, Fire Dept, etc.
ReplyDeleteBut how about no more property taxes for seniors? Or, as a compromise, it could be means tested.
Without property taxes we'd have nobility again. Property taxes are a major reason why feudalism ended. Extremely wealthy people with huge estates would keep their untaxed lands out of production. No mining no timber, nothing. That's what they did, to keep hunting preserves and to stop us peasants from ever improving our lot
ReplyDeleteThe problems are not in the method of taxation, it's our failure to control the way our political class and administrative classes spend the tax money.
Utter bullshit.
Delete"Property taxes are the most evil of all taxes."
ReplyDelete"Taxation is theft."
Ooohkay. Look, I value a libertarian philosophy as much as the next guy, but when I see comments like these I think of where I live. In this town we have, among other things, a police department, a fire department, and several schools. The cops, firemen, and teachers all expect to be paid for what they do. And their workplaces are equipped with things like police cruisers, fire trucks, and textbooks, all of which cost money. Without property taxes, where exactly do you expect the money for all this (and much more) to come from?
Somebody has to collect money to pay for all the town services and to administer them to see that they get done. I sure as hell don't want to volunteer to do this job and I suspect that the rest of you don't either. So we appoint other people to do it; we call them "politicians."
I realize that's an obscene word around here and that politicians, being human, are often crooks, thieves, and abusers of power. But they're doing a job that someone has to do, however badly, and at least in my small town context, live among us and so suffer the consequences of their own actions. Anyhow, what's your alternative?
Same thing with property taxes. If you know of a better way to pay for town services that you and everyone else benefits from I'd love to hear it. And if you want to cap them at some arbitrary low percentage, please tell me which services you want to do without: putting out fires? Catching crooks? Educating kids? Paving streets . . .?
Your argument assumes there is no excessive taxation and that all monies thereby gain are used properly, free of graft or wasteful practices.
DeleteThere is more to be said of your argument but I'll stop by here.
You're right.
DeleteGovernment having to struggle along on only sales tax, business tax, unemployment tax, self-employment tax, gas tax, excise tax, utility tax, road tax, pet tax, vehicle tax, alcohol tax, tobacco tax, boat tax, luxury tax, garbage tax, gift tax, estate tax, and a tax for being late on your taxes is just asking them to cut back too far.
Bingo!
DeleteJpaul
Rick, I said nothing of the sort. Local government is a human institution and as such is subject to human flaws such as waste and graft. To think that all local officials are blameless, high minded public servants is silly, but it's equally ridiculous to paint them all as corrupt, greedy bloodsuckers. Do you actually know any of your locale's public officials? I know many in my town, and most of them are decent people who seem to care about their jobs and want to do them well. And even if I'm wrong about that I have the option to vote in local elections and replace them with people I like better. So do you. (You do vote in local elections, don't you?)
DeleteAnd Aesop, always a pleasure to hear from you. Most of the taxes you list go to the state, not local towns, and even if they did wouldn't generate enough revenue to run a town, which is why we have property taxes in the first place.
Anyhow, neither of you has answered my original question: if we get rid of property taxes what's your alternative? I assume you both want fire, police, public works, and water/sewer departments, etc. etc. (We'll leave schools to the side for now.) So how do you propose to pay for town services?
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteA lot of the country doesn't live in towns, thus paying for services they neither want nor need.
DeleteLet the townies pay for their services, if they want them.
Rural folks are on well water, septic systems, have volunteer FDs, and have maybe one Barney Fife per 50 sq. miles.
Property tax on them is thus a total rip-off in return for nothing but the joy of being fleeced.
And the state takes a cut of it, then dribbles some back to the towns.
Let's take them out of the discussion right off the bat.
Then homeowners will suddenly all be found just outside city limits, and the slumlords in town will just pass property taxes along to their tenants.
What does that look like IRL?
Detroit, and D.C., for two easy examples.
Two failed cities.
Just let one state ban property taxes forever, and see which way the moving vans are travelling 15 minutes later.
Texas does a "no property tax prorated by level of disability. So if you have a 100% disability , you pay no taxes. Sounds like a great idea, eh?
ReplyDeleteBut then all the 100% disability vets are living in my town that has a VA clinic and hospital. That means over 50% of the property is owned by folks that pay nothing to service the infrastructure or schools. And that responsibility falls to regular citizens like me.
Unintended consequences of a well meaning program.
Me: Property tax should be illegal.
ReplyDeleteGovernment: But then we couldn't pay for public schools!
Me: Look, you've already sold me on this idea, you don't have to keep making a better case.
Bingo.
DeleteNow do police and fire.
You endorse public schools? Really? The public school system was instigated by Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan. They wanted to nurture ignorant compliant slaves. 125 years later they've produced generations of ignorants who are now encouraged to question their gender and snitch on their parents. If the parents speak up they are arrested as domestic terrorists. How's all this working for you?
DeleteWhere do you see an endorsement of public schools there, rather than the exact opposite...??
DeleteJust wondering.
Your "sold on the idea" was too subtle for me and flew right over. I read it like as soon as they mentioned public schools you capitulated.
ReplyDeletePerhaps after the revolution, but still doubtful.
ReplyDelete