Property taxes - theft

You never truly own your place. Scumbags!

True enough but there are other ways to generate monies for public services

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You never truly own your place. Scumbags!

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because of democracy. There are more people who do not own property than those that do.

The founders saw this coming

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True enough but there are other ways to generate monies for public services

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An astronomical sales tax? My property taxes are about $8,000/year. They'd have to tax my purchases at 50% or more to get that much out of me, which would cause me to purchase only the bare minimum to survive. The only other option would be an income tax at the County level.

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property taxes

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consumption tax

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Why not both?

My tax bill dropped 10% this year, now about 1700 dollars on a 650 thousand appraisal. Texas town of 10000 people who actively participate in how the local govt spends its money. No state income tax either.

Got mine today too. I didn’t think that I could hate the government anymore than i already do but they always somehow find a way to piss me off just a little bit more.

guess you are against the following:

fire protection (that keeps your fire rating low which in turn keeps your homeowners insurance about 80 - 100% lower than it would be without fire protection). this alone saves you more or as much as your property taxes cost

Police protection - self explanatory

public schools

roads and bridges built and maintained (yes, the state can condemn a bridge at the drop of a hat and close it. They're inspected every year and yes they do deteriorate. The pilings scour out from under them, concrete deteriorates, and metal rusts)

court systems to sue your dumbass neighbor, put your neighbor in jail when he peeping toms your wife while you're fricking her, put your neighbor in jail for killing your child, record the deed to the land you bought from your neighbor so some squatter couldn't take it from you, and last but not least record the legal marriage to your neighbor.

Ambulance protection to scrape you up off the pavement and carry you to a hospital when you have a wreck, or fly you to a trauma center if it's life threatening

parks of all kinds including baseball, soccer, gyms, etc (i'll concede that i guess you could do without these, but it does improve quality of life and attract better neighbors to move into your area)

economic development (yes, some of your taxes go toward attracting industry and other economic development into your area to provide jobs and other revenue to build up your community)

until you see the sausage being made, you don't realize what all your property taxes go towards providing. I see some folks saying "let the state provide the money", but the same amount of money would be needed to provide those services i mentioned. And the money would still have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is your pocket, in the form of drastically higher sales taxes or drastically higher income taxes. Those services i mentioned can't be provided without revenue. AND, if it was left to the state to provide it, do you REALLY want politicians in Baton Rouge, Jackson, Montgomery, Nashville, or Little Rock (yeah, we'll leave out Texas because they're retarded anyway) controlling how much money your locality receives??? Powerful ones will direct the money where they want it to go, and the weaker represented areas won't get squat and will never have the opportunity to pull themselves up. And if you think lobbying is bad now, good lord, it would be a madhouse if you put parish and county appropriations at the state level.

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True enough but there are other ways to generate monies for public services

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If property taxes were eliminated and replaced with another form of taxes people would bitch about that as well.