----; Subject: Property Taxes; Date: 2025-11-12_12:21:30.16; Tags: taxes, politics; Author: tbird20d----This is one of my first"real" blog entries, so I'm going to keep this short.

It's that time of year again to pay property taxes.  

I'm always a bit annoyed at property taxes.  I don't begrudge that I'm gettingvalue for my taxes, or that the government needs to charge them to coverexpenses.  But I do think they could be more fair and efficient.

As a (previous) property owner in California, I have to say that I had mixed feelingsabout Prop 13, which capped the amount that property taxes could increaseover the lifetime of the ownership of the property. This was an effort toavoid the situation where people (particularly seniors on fixed income)could be priced out of their own, fully-paid-for homes, by exorbitant increasesin property values.  Property values for a region are almost completelyout of the control of an individual homeowner, and it's manifestly unfairthat someone should have to move because their taxes reach unsustainablerates due to inflation, growth around them, or some other factor unrelatedto the government services being provided them.  Prop 13 cappedproperty tax increases to 1.5 percent per year from the date of originalpurchase, or of a licensed and permitted upgrade.  This did create certain marketdistortions (such as children living in their parents home longerthan usual, or houses being used for multi-family dwellings), but the overalleffect was achieved, and I think this was a good law.

That is, a property buyer could estimate their futurecosts, and current residents could not be priced out of their own homes.Hawaii has a patchwork of regional and county laws that try to accomplishsome of the same goals (capping the increase in property taxes), withoutcreating weird incentives (for example, incentivizing people to nevermove).

Now, my beef with most region's property taxes is two-fold: 1) you can bepriced out of your home by value increases outside your control, and2) there's a mismatch between the amount paid and the government servicesreceived.  I don't mind paying for a local and regional governmentthat provides police and fire protection, water resource management,road maintenance, garbage collection, libraries, and other services (some of theseare bundled into property taxes and some are not, depending on where you live).But one of the biggest itemsthat property taxes pays for is schools.

This may sound like an old manshouting at the cloud, but why should people without kids pay the cost foreducating someone else's offspring.

I know that the argument is thatmandatory, paid-for education of the community's children provides a socialbenefit that is available to all.  So the argument is that I'm getting anindirect benefit from this civilizing effect of education on youth.This sounds a little bit like a hostage argument. "Pay up, or we'll letour kids develop into ignorant, feral animals.  And then you'll be sorry!".There are all kinds of arguments about the cost of education beingtoo high.  And it could probably be made more efficient.  But I'm more interestedin the philosophical argument that one person should really not bemade to pay for the service given to another person.  How bad would itbe to let people who choose to have children (the parents) pay for the educationof their children, instead of some random person who happens to live near them.Is this simply a case of the state being unwilling to make an unfunded mandate?You have to educate your kids.  That's probably a good mandate.  But why shouldstrangers pay for it?

The real injustice is that people who home-school their children, or sendtheir children to private schools, end up paying not only for their own kidsbut for other people's kids also.  They can't opt out of funding a systemthat they don't benefit (directly) from, and that they might be ideologicallyopposed to.

This might make me sound libertarian, but I just wish I could opt out ofsome of the services I'm not using.

I could go on.  Any maybe I'll come back and edit this post.  But that's enough for now.