So where do you live? Unless you live in a "tent city" or somewhere else you can pitch a tent or park a trailer for free, you actually DO pay property taxes.
When you rent a house, apartment, condo, hotel/motel room, you are paying the property tax as it is factored into the "Rent". As someone who is intimately involved in rental property, I can assure you that as property tax increases, so does the rent.
What I would like to see WA State adopt is a similar program as exists in Arizona (and other states as well) where the value of a piece of property is established when you purchase it. That is the basis for all future property tax and it remains such until it is sold. This provides the homeowner two benefits. If they choose to stay in the property for a long time they aren't faced with tax creep. The other is that the Sale Price is the most accurate method of assessing a tax. The method used in WA, where comparable values based on similar property sales has too many chances for error as well as the possibility that Assessors inflate values in order to generate more revenue. This would keep "little old ladies" from getting kicked to the curb. If they and their husband bought the place sometime after WWII for $5,000 and today it's worth a million bucks, all the taxes they would have paid was on the basis of the original purchase price. When they die however, the heirs would have to pay on the basis of current value.
Do I see another "Tim Eyman Initiative" in this? Maybe soon.
Picky picky
Paying something that's an unknown percentage of my rent check (along with a bunch of other stuff I probably don't know about) is one thing, I just write out that same check to the property manager every month. Having to write the tax check to the gov't is entirely different, and much more infuriating in my mind. As I keep saying,
CUT SPENDING AND WE WOULDN'T NEED A PROPERTY TAX TO FINANCE LEGITIMATE LOCAL SERVICES!
As long as we're bitching over what
ought to be, how bout this?
Amendment(s) to state & federal Constitutions expressly forbidding any tax on owned property, specifically naming property tax, income tax, capital gains tax, estate tax, and thumb tax for good measure. Any new or increase in
constitutionally legitimate taxes (tariffs, sales tax, gov't fees, etc) requires a 3/4 majority of both houses and the signature of the executive, whose veto in this case could not be overridden, and/or vote of 3/4 of the people, as well as specifically stating on such bill/initiative/proposition the constitutional authority for said tax, and the specific items to be funded by such (ie no robbing the transit tax to pay for fire dept after the fact).
Oh, and any politician who even
thinks about proposing a property, income, estate, etc tax will be summarily tarred & feathered and deported to Canada where they tolerate that sort of thing.
SVG: Volunteer fire dept's have their place, as do privately contracted ones, as do community-funded (and yes even union) ones. One size don't fit all there. A volunteer fire dept works great here in lil' Freeland or rural NY where my wife grew up. It could NOT work in a major metropolitan area (Seattle, NYC, etc).
