• Welcome to New Hampshire Underground.
 

News:

Please log in on the special "login" page, not on any of these normal pages. Thank you, The Procrastinating Management

"Let them march all they want, as long as they pay their taxes."  --Alexander Haig

Main Menu

Submission for KFP : "Property Taxes are Communism"

Started by FTL_Ian, June 06, 2006, 04:53 PM NHFT

Previous topic - Next topic

FTL_Ian

Property Taxes are Communism

What better way to welcome someone to the area than with a huge property tax bill?  I just bought some property in Keene, and what's the first thing I get in the mail?  A nearly $3,000 bill for property taxes!  This amount will only cover six months!  Keene's property taxes are so high, it's like paying rent again.  One of the main reasons I became a homeowner was to get away from throwing money down the rent rathole, now I'm just throwing it down the property tax rathole to the tune of $500 per month.

"What?!" you say, "You have to have property taxes!  What about our government services?  What about the schools?".  To that I say, wait.  Back up.  Reset.

Did you realize that property taxes are communism in America?  A hallmark of communism is central control and distribution of resources.  Anyone who has paid even a little attention to history knows that communism is always a failure, because centralization is inefficient, slow, stupid, and dangerous.  Why do we put up with this in the USA let alone the great state of New Hampshire?  Just in case you're confused, here's how property taxes work:

Some "authority", in this case the "Department of Assessment", assigns a value to your property.  The "Revenue Collector" then applies a tax rate of X mils to your property and sends you a bill.  Providing you do not want a band of armed thugs (the police) coming to throw you off the property that YOU paid for, you pay the outrageously expensive bill.  So does everyone else.  All these payments are sent to the Revenue Collector (the central controller) who then sends portions of your money off to other centrally controlled bureaucracies like the School Board and Police Department.

"Are you saying you don't want school and police?!"

No, not at all.  I'm saying I don't like communist forced wealth redistribution schemes.  It's totally possible to have both schools and police without property taxes.  And no, I'm not proposing another tax to replace it.  My proposal will give us better schools and police, here's how:

Most people would agree that schools and police are important things to have around.  However, has anyone ever asked themselves why these bureaucracies cannot be funded on a voluntary basis?  If they are truly providing a valuable service, surely people will step up to the plate and buy their services just like we buy services from Panera Bread or Walmart on a voluntary basis.

"How will voluntary funding make police and schools better?"

Simple, because if they aren't doing their jobs, they won't get the funding.  With today's property tax scam, it doesn't matter how bad or inefficient the police, schools, and other government services are, they keep getting bigger budgets year after year.  There's no accountability and not much that we can do about it.  If we were to set a date, say Jan 1st 2007 and tell these bureaucracies that they will no longer get tax funding after that date, they'd either figure out how to voluntarily fund themselves, or they would die from uselessness.  Inefficent bureaucracies would have to turn into efficient businesses to survive.  None of the rest of us in business get a guaranteed fat funding check every 6 months, neither should the government.

"Great idea!  How do we get there from here?"

That's the tricky part.  I see two paths:

1.  Electing principled, pro-Liberty candidates to local office.  These individuals could make the changes necessary to set a date for conversion to voluntary funding, and everything would be "official".  We'd all get one last property tax bill, and the bureaucrats would get a deadline to become 100% voluntarily funded.

2.  Civil disobedience.  Did you ever ask yourself, what would they do if 10% of residents refused to pay?  What about 25%?  Would they build a big jail and throw us all in and take all our property?  This shows how absurd property taxes are.  If you were to put those people in jail, you'd be destroying the economy of the area from two directions.  The economy would take a hit because all those productive individuals would be in jail sitting around.  It would take another hit, because they'd have to raise the remaining population's taxes to pay for the 10 or 25% sitting in jail!

If we can shift our bureaucracies to voluntary funding models and eliminate the oppressive property tax, New Hampshire will become the wealthiest place in the world.  Imagine what you could do if you didn't have to pay those thousands of dollars a year to the government.  Imagine being able to control every dollar you earn, and spend it, save it, and give it away in the ways that YOU think are best!  This change is possible, and it's being discussed at http://forum.nhfree.com .  I hope you give it the utmost serious consideration.

Ian Bernard
Host, "Free Talk Live"
http://freetalklive.com

Kat Kanning

It'll go in the 6/25 edition, but I can put it up on the website now.

FrankChodorov

QuoteSome "authority", in this case the "Department of Assessment", assigns a value to your property.  The "Revenue Collector" then applies a tax rate of X mils to your property and sends you a bill.  Providing you do not want a band of armed thugs (the police) coming to throw you off the property that YOU paid for, you pay the outrageously expensive bill.  So does everyone else.  All these payments are sent to the Revenue Collector (the central controller) who then sends portions of your money off to other centrally controlled bureaucracies like the School Board and Police Department.

...I'm saying I don't like communist forced wealth redistribution schemes.

a market value is assigned from objective data points (sales of other properties) via a private company.

the assessment is for two seperate and distinct values:

1. building value (created via human labor)
2. land value (not created via the landowner's labor)

the definition of wealth includes the expenditure of labor.

the tax you pay for your building values is theft of wealth
the tax you pay for your land values prevents a theft of your neighbors wealth if rather than collected and spent by the government it is instead collected and returned directly and equally to those that created it - your neighbors.

Lex



Lex


Lex


Russell Kanning

"Providing you do not want a band of armed thugs (the police) coming to throw you off the property that YOU paid for, you pay the outrageously expensive bill.  So does everyone else."

Ya know .... that is not completely true. :)

FTL_Ian

Well, you'd be thrown "off" the trailer park's property, and thrown "out" of your own.   ;)

FrankChodorov

Quote from: FTL_Ian on June 06, 2006, 09:09 PM NHFT
Well, you'd be thrown "off" the trailer park's property, and thrown "out" of your own.   ;)

because they live in a mobile home village and therefore probably don't own the land but lease it from the landowner they don't pay the land value portion of the property tax (although they probably do via their lease payment)...

paying a tax on their mobile homes depreciating value is definitely theft and I would advise them to take a principled stand and not pay it but rather donate the money to the Liberty Scholarship Fund.

Tom Sawyer

Quote from: FrankChodorov on June 06, 2006, 05:10 PM NHFT

2. land value (not created via the landowner's labor)

the definition of wealth includes the expenditure of labor.


I sure as heck paid for the land I "own". Maybe if your talking about the folks that stole it from the Indians your view would be correct.

And your definition of wealth is old school... price is determined by value if traded to others, not how much labor was put into it. Carve an object with a pen knife and it takes you 5 years... it's not necessarily worth 5 years labor unless someone else thinks it is.

tracysaboe


FTL_Ian

Quote from: katdillon on June 06, 2006, 05:06 PM NHFT
It'll go in the 6/25 edition, but I can put it up on the website now.

Super!  Thanks!

KBCraig

Quote from: russellkanning on June 06, 2006, 08:29 PM NHFT
"Providing you do not want a band of armed thugs (the police) coming to throw you off the property that YOU paid for, you pay the outrageously expensive bill.  So does everyone else."

Ya know .... that is not completely true. :)

Ian said several things in that article that I'm certain he doesn't feel are true. But it's okay... he omits his true feelings about schools, police and fire departments, while offering a gentle backdoor approach by bringing up voluntary support.

I think he did a great job.

Applause for Ian!

Kevin

FrankChodorov

Quote from: Roger Grant on June 06, 2006, 10:02 PM NHFT
Quote from: FrankChodorov on June 06, 2006, 05:10 PM NHFT

2. land value (not created via the landowner's labor)

the definition of wealth includes the expenditure of labor.


I sure as heck paid for the land I "own". Maybe if your talking about the folks that stole it from the Indians your view would be correct.

And your definition of wealth is old school... price is determined by value if traded to others, not how much labor was put into it. Carve an object with a pen knife and it takes you 5 years... it's not necessarily worth 5 years labor unless someone else thinks it is.

if we were sharing economic rent equally and directly between neighbors in a community there would be no "sales price" to occupy a particular location.

you are confusing wealth with value via price...

in order for wealth to be created there has to be labor inputs...in the case of economic rent the labor inputs are from your neighbors not from the owner.

thus, the landowner is capturing the labor of those he excludes via a tax to be paid by one of them at the time of a sale or a tenant monthly.