Posted on 12/29/2011 11:53:25 AM PST by Cowman
I was just wondering if there has ever been a successful challenge to the concept of property tax? It seems to me that requiring someone to pay an annual rent on a bit of land that happens to be in the bounderies of a particular town is a direct challenge to the very idea of ownership itself.
If you have paid for, have title to, maintain, insure, and are responsible for liability issues from that land then you should own it outright and not be required to pay that rent. The annual fee essentially says that you do not own that land but are just involved in a long term rental contract that has never been signed by either party involved. <
In addition to this what about those who do not use the town “services” that are supposedly what the tax is used to pay for. If you send your kids to private school, pay for a private trash hauler, Have a private well and a private septic you receive no benefit and therefore shoe required to pay for them yet several thousand dollars are taken from you every year.
It seems to me that some enterprising young attorney would have tried to challenge this at some point.
Does anyone know if this has ever been done?
I don’t know about challenges but the precedents go way, way back in English common law beyond the Magna Carta.
As long as private property is taxed, there is no private ownership of property. You are technically leasing land owned by the government, if you are paying rent in the name of a land tax.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand
Good Luck.
Good luck with that. Property tax has always existed in the US and Britain. No court can or will overrule it.
Your best bet might be to buy an entire County.
Considering that the county may say that your land directly benefit from the roads, zoning, law enforcement, utilities access, fire protection, educational access and protections guarrenteed by the Constitution; a property tax for these serices may be accessed.
Having land that is immune from these services would greatly dimminish the value of that property; as well as lower the property value of the land surrounding you. Thus, to serve the “greater good” - we all have the honor and priviledge of paying the Gov’t ‘taxes’ upon the land we own, improve, insure and live on.
What is your source for saying property taxes have always existed in America?
It is common knowledge that property tax has existed since colonial times.
“A Brief History of Property Tax” by Carlson speaks of Boston taxing property in 1676. Google the title for the article.
That was probably notable because it was a change. I don’t think that the property tax became universal until after the Conn. government school superintendent, Birdsey Grant Northrup, hit upon a property tax as a way to pillage property owners on behalf of the education special interests.
I seem to recall reading that Nevada, at one time, had a provision where property owners could pay (going from memory here) something like 20 years worth of property tax or their life expectancy or somesuch and be done with it. Maybe useful to leave property to heirs, iirc.
It falls under the concept of alloidal title I think.
It’s an interesting question and just dovetails into the overall observation that America is dying a death by a thousand cuts, her citizens being un-assed over time esp. since the time of FDR.
Funny money, no property rights, destruction of the family by design, it’s not exactly subtle.
Property taxes are going through the roof, and they are not withheld. Unless you have them escrowed with your mortgage payment you write checks for them and, unlike sales or income tax, you know exactly how much you pay, and that is why they anger so many. I think most states’ constitutions permit them, but the US Constitution does not because it is neither a tax on income, nor a tax apportioned according to the number of free persons.
If everyone had to pay their income tax with one check, once a year, more people would be angry about them, too.
Lets say though that you owned your own land, and nothing else. How would you travel?
Statistics vary by area, but experts estimate that between 30 and 60 percent of taxable property in the United States is over-assessed, and this leads to higher property tax bills. Middle- and lower-income taxpayers are among the most often over-assessed. Yet typically fewer than 5 percent of taxpayers challenge their assessments, even though the majority who do so win at least a partial victory when properly prepared.
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/challenging-property-taxes.html
I have successfully appealed every re-assessment since I bought this property. They have over-assessed it every time, and with the further declines since the bubble burst, I may try to appeal it again. Our city is terribly mismanaged, as are most US cities, and they are hiking our property taxes yet again.
I have a small home on privately owned property.
I have a well and septic.
My children go to private school, and I have a private company handle refuse which I haul out.
The county says my home is worth more than it is, it is a scam.
1. I disagree that it’s “rent”, but you’re free to make a case that it is.
2. I believe the original property tax in most, if not all, areas in the US was put into place by elected representatives or by the voters themselves. (Who else would have had the authority or power to do it?) In the United States, such things are generally precipitated by some form of vote or election, although it may have happened so far in the past that we lost track of the actual event. Furthermore, in my area at least, we get to vote on the property taxes every so often.
Some people seem to have a problem with the outcome of votes and elections when they came up on the short end. Most of these people are Democrat/liberals who want things to go their way no matter what others have decided.
Instead of trying to persuade people to vote in a way that is more to their liking, they have hissy fits.
A recurring fee that is paid for the right to be in a particular place sounds like rent to me.
What else would you call it?
BTW at what public trough do you feed?
What else would you call it?"
Well,
Definition of RENT
1
: property (as a house) rented or for rent
2
a : a usually fixed periodical return made by a tenant or occupant of property to the owner for the possession and use thereof; especially : an agreed sum paid at fixed intervals by a tenant to the landlord b : the amount paid by a hirer of personal property to the owner for the use thereof
So actually you're not too far off except you neglected the part about "owner". On the other hand,
Definition of TAX
1
a : a charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes
So, if you are the owner of property, anything you pay to someone else as a result of that ownership is not rent. It could be a tax. It could be extortion. It could be something else. But it's not rent.
"BTW at what public trough do you feed?"
The trough of public purposes (see above). I don't partake of everything that's in that trough, but I do use the roads and the bridges and so forth, and the fire and ambulance services are there if I need them. Further more, I help fill the trough. And I vote on the tax levies, sometimes for but more often against. Sometimes I and the folks who vote the same as I do prevail and sometimes we don't. But in the United States (most places I know of anyhow) such things are handled by voting and I acknowledge that my side will not always prevail.
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