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Author Message   Trent_Daddy Citizen Username: Tcedwards Post Number: 177 Registered: 6-2001 Posted on Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - 4:11 pm:        Your thoughts? http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20060308/ts_csm/arevolt   John Nance Citizen Username: Johnnance Post Number: 21 Registered: 3-2006 Posted on Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - 4:21 pm:        Very interesting. My current state (California) 'solved' this problem by passing Prop 13 almost 30 years ago, and a number of equally 'effective' follow-ons. If similar thinking is going on there, I would strongly suggest that people look at the consequences on a state that went, effectively, from one of the best to one of the worst in infrastructure and education over the period.   sac Supporter Username: Sac Post Number: 3205 Registered: 5-2001 Posted on Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - 6:02 pm:        I thought that the observation that "even the IRS isn't so bold as to tax unrealized gain" was an interesting one. While I don't necessarily agree that no gain in value should be taxed, it does point out one of the real inequities in the property tax system - that is the tax being based upon something that is not very reflective of "ability to pay." However, the statement in the article about property tax being "the fairest of all taxes" was pure BS as far as I'm concerned. They said that was because it was raised and spent locally, but that doesn't really have much to do with fairness, while ability to pay certainly does. We've already gone partway down the "proposition 13" route, with the recent "reforms" that capped our local spending and took much of the local control away. Local control is one of the few advantages of property taxes and given the current situation, we aren't getting enough of that to justify what we are paying. I still don't understand why we can't have a local income tax instead of all or part of the property tax ... like NYC and some other cities in other states. That would give us a fairer tax base AND (hopefully) also the local control advantage.