August 17, 2024
The Property Tax Scam
By Molly Slag
Like pandemics and climate change, inflation is a handy smokescreen for government overreach. The modus operandi of this deception is the doctrine that “inflated property values inflate property taxes.” While that has a plausible ring to it, the property tax system in most states is actually invulnerable to inflation. If, at the stroke of midnight, inflation caused the assessed value of all taxable property to double, no one’s property taxes would increase. Incredible? Allow me to explain.
Every county in every state is home to numerous taxing districts: school districts, sewer districts, water districts, sanitation districts, fire districts, flood control districts, cities, the county itself, and sometimes even the state itself or certain state agencies.
Each of these taxing districts has a statutory authority enabling it to adopt an annual budget and to levy that budget on the district’s taxpayers as a proportional property tax.
How is it proportional? Here is how it works: The county assessor assesses the value of all the taxable real (e.g., houses) and personal property (e.g., cars) in the taxing district, and the tax law levies the district budget on the district taxpayers in proportion to their ownership of property in the district. For example, if a given taxpayer owned one percent of all the taxable real and personal property in the district, that taxpayer would be taxed for one percent of that district’s budget.
This is called a “proportional” property tax because a taxpayer owes in proportion to what he owns.
more
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/the_property_tax_scam.html
