The Urbanophile has an interesting post on the demographics of property tax revolts.
He offers the speculation, without concluding, that resistance to property taxes versus other kinds of taxes might have something to do with the aging population.
People who are coming up on retirement are going to see drops in income and consumption, but they own lots of taxable property. In fact, they probably have more wealth, much of it in the form of taxable property, than the younger families who are out buying clothes for their kids, furniture for their growing families, etc. Younger people are also those who are more likely to see their incomes go up, not down over time. Older households are also less likely to consume services, such as schools, typically funded by property taxes.
This would make property tax caps a sort of tax shelter tending to benefit older people. This goes to the point that, here in Indiana, we’ve been engaged in a tax shift, not so much “tax reform” or “tax relief.” I don’t think it’s an accident that the sorts of taxes that have gotten the most attention – estate taxes and property taxes – are those which disproportionately affect those of means. There hasn’t been nearly the push for payroll tax relief or income tax relief or sales tax relief. In fact, those taxes have tended to increase as the other sorts are limited or eliminated.
The Golden Rule: “Them that has the gold, rules!”
Well, nothing beats the ability to solve a problem without looking at it.
The California Tax Revolt, which begat Proposition 13, occurred in 1978. What’s the Faith Popcorn View of Politics take on that? “Hippies turning thirty want to buy property?”
“Older people own more property”? I don’t know if I find that more insulting, or more unforgivably lazy. (Taxable) Property is in the hands of the wealthy. Always has been; stays that way from generation to generation. What most people consider when you mention Property Taxes are those on which any mortgage is tax-deductable, an individual’s home, and maybe his second home–which we, as a society, have chosen to encourage home ownership, and which benefits bankers and builders much more than property tax payers–not commercial and investment properties, which, by the way, fared less well under Indiana “reform” than did residences.
Hell yes, more older people own property. It takes considerable effort for most people to come up with a down payment and qualify for a loan, and then it takes thirty years to pay the damn thing off. Similarly, more rich people own yachts, more farmers own livestock, and more young people own kick-ass car audio systems. None of these requires thought experiments to grasp, and none makes the case for generational or occupational warfare.
And we know what was what in Indiana: not a revolt centered in retirement villages, but an astroturf anti-tax crusade on behalf of a floundering governor who’d caused the problem, aimed at his likely opponent who had nothing to do with it. Let’s save the opprobrium for them as deserves it, and not tar the sixty-year-old couple down the street who’re facing twenty-thirty years of fixed-income living and escalating medical bills, whose home is their one major possession, and who saw–regardless of whether they were being manipulated, regardless of whether they missed who was actually responsible–that possession being whittled away by taxes.