Dale Moss has a good column on property taxes in the Courier Journal. He adds his voice to the chorus calling for property tax overhaul. But what’s almost unique about his perspective is how forthright he is about his reason for wanting a change. He candidly admits that his property was probably underassessed under the old system. His taxes jumped dramatically under the new system. He’s not sure if he’s being overtaxed under the new system, but he got bit, so he’s jumping – and he wants the property tax overhauled. Under the old assessment system, for example, old but valuable houses were not valued anywhere near their market value.
Anyway, I like how direct his perspective is. No explanation about why the property tax is bad while other taxes are better. No pretending that government is spending dramatically more than it did 10 years ago. Nope. His taxes went up, and he doesn’t like it. No more, no less.
My perception of most property tax protesters matches what Mr. Moss is honest enough to admit – “I got away with underpaying my taxes under the old assessment system, but now that we’ve gone to a more fair system, I want the rules changed.”
I mean, did these folks never look at their assessments and think “Wow, my house is worth more than that. If I ever had to pay taxes based on the real value, ….”?
It does seem like a lot of objections to tax increases are along the lines of:
“If things get biased in my favor, I should be able to count on that bias forever. It should never be fixed in such a way that I don’t like it”.
It would be interesting to know how many tax dollars went uncollected all those many years under the fixed system. Imagine those monies would have helped a lot in keeping schools maintained, crime controlled, pensions funded, neighborhoods rebuilt…