I worked with a military NCO who spent around six years in Montana. She’d bought a ranch property...put up a horse stable and cleared a good bit of 300 acre property. The property value escalated a significant amount by the time she got ready to sell, and she had a fair sized tax issue to account with. The local accountant just grinned, and pulled out this text written and passed by the House about a decade prior. As long as the property was noted as a horse-property and met several conditions....no taxes were owed on the profit. Oddly enough, the text was only written for Montana horse-ranch property.
I would speculate there are thousands of text exceptions written and people would be shocked that you could raise the taxation rate to 99-percent, and it wouldn’t matter....these exceptions to taxation exist and the majority of people would not be affected by AOC’s gimmick.
” ...The local accountant just grinned, and pulled out this text written and passed by the House about a decade prior... “
We’re no fools here in Montana.
Currently our legislature is in session, for another 71 days, and then they ar done for two years.
Our reps and senators get paid about $100 per day of the session and a per diem that is not so good. When the session is over it’s the end of the paychecks. NO professional legislators in this state.
What we get in return is citizen centered laws that make sense...until our worthless Governor vetos them...
Our property tax is low, we have NO sales tax and our income tax is, at the highest rate, is just 6.9%.
All FReepres are welcome! Let me know if you are looking for property, my wife is an HONEST and hard working RE Broker/Owner.
Montana loves FReepers!
Taxes are, or should be, simply a way to raise operational funds for the government, period.
They should fall equally on the rich, the poor and the middle, every resident of America needs to have some of their own skin in the game.
No politician should ever be able to say "We'll tax those other people, not you!", indeed, if there must be an exception to the rule, it should be that legislators who have the authority to impose taxes are taxed TWICE the rate their sessions impose on the rest of us for life!
You want to reward your cronies? Pass a special one year duration law to give them government funds, make it public, defend it every year. If you can't, they haven't earned a taxpayer funded reward. Defend and pass it or pay them out of your own pocket, or maybe, just maybe, they can earn extra money in the marketplace by offering better goods and services, just like the rest of us must!
Same for the lefty hypocrite (redundant) Bruce Springsteen. He gets a massive break on his property taxes in NJ, because he owns bees or is considered a farm.
The uber wealthy don’t have income like most people do. They don’t work at jobs. They live off of investments, etc. That is why Warren Buffett can pretend to be concerned when he says he is taxed at a lower rate than his secretary. If they started taxing wealth you would hear the rich liberals squeal.