Lesley Stedman Weidenbener has an article entitled “Property Tax Foes Join Forces.” However, it could have just as easily been entitled “Some Citizens Want Something For Nothing”. 10 taxpayer groups have decided to create the Indiana Property Tax Repeal Alliance to promote the idea of repealing the property tax entirely because complete repeal is supposedly popular.
The equation, as presented in the article, is incomplete because it does not tell which government services will be eliminated or which other sorts of taxes will be increased and by how much. Obviously “Hey Citizen, you want something for nothing?” is more popular than “Hey Citizen, you want deteriorating roads, bad drainage, spotty police protection, run down schools?” or “Hey Citizen, you want us to jack up taxes on your next bread or car purchase or take more out of your paycheck?”
Mmoja Ajabu, a Marion County member, said the issue can be boiled down to a simple question: “Will government be of the people or will it be a government that preys on the people?”
Actually, no. It’s not anywhere near that simple.
I’m waiting on the legislator with the guts to stand up say “Stop your whining and name the services you want me to get rid of” when people complain about taxes being too high.
It’s my perception that it’s folks who lived in undervalued property who are yelling the loudest, as opposed to realizing they got a break for a number of years. I mean, if the government is assessing your home at a value way below what you know it’s worth, don’t you ever think to yourself “Hey, if they ever assessed the house for the real value, I’d pay a load more in taxes.”
The property tax nuts claim they’ll have a study in two weeks that will explain how we can do away with property taxes. I’m wondering exactly what they’re going to offer that either Kenley or the Daniels committee haven’t considered already.
I think its the political potential of these folks that scares the business community which has, so far, come out in opposition to The Daniels Plan. Under the old system, the artificial assessments were designed to basically keep residential property owners paying a lot less than business property owners. I heard a clip on the radio yesterday to the effect that residential property tax payers were paying about 25% of the state’s property taxes 10 years ago and now their share is up to like 60%. I may have butchered those numbers, but the increase in the residential share of the taxes was dramatic.
You can certainly argue that residential taxpayers weren’t paying their fair share in the past, but that doesn’t make a huge jump hurt less.
Of course taxes hurt and we should have the least government possible to do all the things we decide are our priorities. But in the end, we must all pay. I personally think property taxes should probably be less of the equation, but not eliminated.
In fact, we do we have separate library boards, sewer districts and the like? Can’t we eliminate some of the layers of Township Government? Not without goring someone’s ox.
And Joe knows that no legislator or councilman in Indiana has the cajones to say that, but boy would it be refreshing. (He might not like the tar-and feathering he got though…)
Well, in my mind we solve that pain not by financially shifting the pain around in an endless shell game, we solve it by looking at why the government requires so much money.
My take on what the Daniels committee has found out (and what our legislators know, but are afraid to remind us) is that people like the services government provides, they just want them cheaper. But when a certain governor tried to make things cost less by trying things like privatization, people complained about that too.
In reality, I don’t come at it much differently than Abdul did this morning. However, I think it takes people willing to make a lot of people a little mad to solve the problem, and those are few & far between in Indiana government.
http://x-wire.blogspot.com/2007/08/how-to-decimate-property-tax-base-in.html
It surely would be worth a few bucks to check this out with your attorney, because the alternative is ever increasing property tax bills, thanks to trending.
The end result is when every citizen is an ordained minister, and every home is a church( with the Federal legal protections for sectarian/religious based violence, and church arsons; the state will have to throw up its hands in disgust, and either repeal the church state property tax exemption, and tax mega buck churches of the “immaculate deduction”- you know the ones; or tax the rich to make up for the shortfall. one place to start would be to make everybody pay sales tax at point of purchase, and then refund any overcharges on state and federal tax forms- preventing discount club and internet tax evasion.
and making mega churches pay tax, on their 501c3 evasion schemes. check it out- you have nothing to lose. sign up your kids, as well- make them exempt from selective service, as conscientious objectors..
Not really central to your point, but trending doesn’t mean increasing property taxes. Trending only determines your per capita share of the total tax.