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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Looks like textbook “angry white man syndrome”. Just a standard boilerplate maga rant. “[i]Oh, my property taxes are too high!” “You’re spending MY money on brown people!” “I’ll close my remarks by threatening you.”[/i]

Fortunately there are more than enough good and decent people in MoCo to drown out violent screaming nutjobs like that a-hole. [/quote]

why is it maga?  i'm not maga and my property taxes have almost increased 100% in a decade or so.  why should I be happy about that.

and before you talk about home prices, we havent gotten any better services in a decade to justify 100% increase in property taxes.  51% goes to MCPS and elrich wants a special assessment on top of the increases for Capital projects.

maybe you dont care but people are fed up.  [/quote]

Your property taxes increased 100% because the value of your home increased 100%

… you psychopath[/quote]

this isnt how property taxes work, its not an unrealized gains tax.  and my property didnt increase anywhere near 100%.

this is the problem with socialists.  they own nothing and they want the government to tax everyone out of their property b/c they think they'll get it

you wont

glad states are looking at if property taxes are the best want to fund.  maryland will go to war to keep property taxes but they'll be plenty of states that get rid of them
[/quote]

DP.  Agree on the potential faultiness of assumptions made (e.g., assuming [i]your[/i] house -- or even a typical property -- appreciated that much because [i]some[/i] properties did, and that that is the entire cause of the increased tax), but that applies to both sides of the debate (e.g., assuming 51% for school funding is out of line because it's...51%?  Is this a magically inappropriate level?  Have costs increased, perhaps at a rate different from general inflation?  Have needs increased?  What about accumulated infrastruture deficit that may have been the result of [i]under-[/i]funding over prior decades that saw a lower comparator percentage?).

If we want government operations/services (police, parks, etc ), we need revenue.  Call it what you will ("tariffs" or "fees" or the like), but that is all a tax of some sort at its heart.  Even lottery revenue apportionments ("tax on the stupid") or government-policy-driven inflation ("stealth tax").  All taxes come from wealth of some kind, and each thing taxed is effectively discouraged by some marginal amount.

Taxing use (e.g., bridge tolls) discourages that use of a particular resource.  Taxing sales discourages transaction activity (particularly useful for things like gasoline or tobacco, where the negative externalities are not well captured but the point of sale affords a relatively efficient assessment/collection mechanism).  Taxing assets, like real estate, diminishes the value of the asset class.  Taxing income diminishes incentive for obtaining that income.  And so on.

Each might have a more or less appropriate reason.  For example, road tolls might be set to pay for construction/upkeep of the road so that the burden is placed on the beneficiary, though beneficiaries of externalities (i.e., those not using the toll road but experiencing less traffic because of it) might be expected to support through some amount of more general taxation.  More to present issues, impact taxes might be collected on development to cover the cost of expansion of associated demand for government services (i.e., for the additional residents/new businesses who might then occupy said development).

Government (and by that, in this case, I mean [i]us[/i] as a society, presuming we have some reasonable role in choosing our government) needs to determine what things it wants to encourage/discourage via the amalgamation of taxes.  If we deem that we have reached [i]over-development[/i], we might want to [i]increase[/i] impact tax or related development fees -- even if that has to be taken to the state level to allow it.  MoCo's present government clearly has chosen the opposite, trying to encourage development with lower associated tax burdens (along with lowering other hurdles, which might be seen as elimination of low-value or outdated regulation, but the effects of which are rather uncertain -- those regulations had purpose to ensure societal benefit).

Back to the various potential revenue sources.  With limitations on the effectiveness of use taxes (at least until conputing/"AI" might better be employed to reduce over-burdensome human-oriented complexity), and with both those and sales taxes typically presenting societally regressive results, taxes on assets (to the extent they can be identified, and real estate is, perhaps, most easily so -- it would be hard for the government to track your jewelry, say) and/or income are the go-tos for most.  Between these, while income can be tracked better, perhaps (for standard wage-earners and typical investments -- there is plenty either black market or  otherwise hidden, the one more utilized at the lower end of income and the other more utilized at the higher end), it also presents a rather regressive option in comparison at the state/local level, with rates capped pretty early on the income scale (until/unless we change that).  In addition, it may be difficult to present societal benefit of choosing to discourage income-related activity, particularly income related to employment rather than passive income related to investment, as the former is the more direct representation of economic activity/productivity that tends to build society, instead of choosing to diminish asset value.

While a mix of revenue sources in that amalgamation may be appropriate, the current economic landscape, societal needs and available tax paradigms may well make real estate tax the most appropriate lever to move.  This is assuming that waste reduction is more difficult (I think most everyone, other than those benefitting from graft, would prefer that) and that austerity is less desired (probably more of a debate, there, largely between current haves and current have-nots, though that might depend on what is on the chopping block).

Of course, as you allude, MoCo & Maryland do not operate in a vacuum, and different situations in other municipalities/states (or even countries) may present tax regimes that would encourage investment and migration, leaving us with less, here, than might be hoped.  It's not a simple matter, and the county/state should be much more careful in their associated decision-making than they have been in recent years.  That might take a different set of elected representatives and a different mandate to government workers than those currently in place that seem to have been driven to a greater degree by special interests ([i]some[/i] level of special interest always is in play) than we might like.

Talk about not a simple matter, though, as we shift from economics to politics... :roll:[/quote]

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