Property taxes basically punish people who succeed in the system you manage to buy a home and reward those who rent, have many children in public school. Consider:

1) Even if you don’t have children or the kids have left the nest you still have to pay the same amount of property taxes.

2) Even if you live in a home say worth $500,000 and property taxes of $7,000 whose value is declining (due to the sub-prime real estate fiasco we currently find ourselves in) you have to pay a proportional amount of taxes to support the government. Those who rent don’t.

It is fundamentally wrong and outrageous that to tax somebody’s right to own property. Should you pay taxes every year on the clothes you wear, the clothes in your wardrobe, your coffee maker stove, refrigerator … every year? It does not make sense.

So where will the money come from? Sales tax. But the problem with that is that tax and spend politicians invisible hand will raise the budget a little this year and the next and the next … and most people wont’ even notice the hikes let alone protest.

Taxes are dangerous and seductive in any form without strong disciplinary rules. Taxes need to be tied to a measurable gauge and have a sticks and carrots rider. For instance, taxes could be assessed on

1) A percentage of a region’s total net wage income.
2) Reducing sales taxes from a set amount tied to politicians vacation days. Starting vacation days to government employees should be severely limited thereby putting pressure on those in charge. Do they want to look at sad faces on their staff because they can’t reel in spending? This has a double edge strategy. When politicians are not in office they can’t spend money. This is a win/win for taxpayers.

House speaker Glenn Richardson, Georgia, is traveling throughout the state advocating abolishing all property taxes. He makes the point that while incomes rose in Georgia in the 1990-2005 era by 146.8 percent, property tax revenue rose 176.8 percent. He points out that property taxes are rising faster than people’s ability to pay them. That is happening throughout this nation.

We need to reel in and punish politicians who propose bigger and better without the means to finance those plans. We need to stop punishing those who own homes.

Taxes on a home should only be paid when:
1) a home is bought
2) a home is sold

The question of how to make up lost revenues would fall on the state and they could remit to local governments their share, or there could be a local optional sales tax. In either case, capping the taxes is essential to promote spending discipline, tax shift or no tax shift.