[sackofmugs]

I don't understand why they divide the appraised value by three, then compute 1.5% property tax from it and say they can't raise it any higher. Where I live, our property tax rate is higher even with a homestead exemption AND we don't divide by three. Simply removing the division would fix the revenue problem according to the article's math.

More specifically, right now I just checked and I pay 1.6% of my home's appraised market value each year as property tax. Galesburg pays 0.5%. So there's an easy fix.

[r_hoods_ghost]

Yeah... I'm in the UK and my council tax (nearest equivalent) is currently about 1.7% of my house's value p/a, although council tax is fairly regressive and has a hard cap. Whenever I hear Americans complaining about how terrible their infrastructure is (and it is compared to every other developed country I've ever been to) I can't help but wonder why you don't do the obvious thing and just pay to fix it.

edit 1.7% not 2.7%!

[ajuc]

UK has population density of 280 people per km2, most of Europe has over 100, USA has 36. It's ok if you put everybody in densely populated areas, but when you spread them around you either pay 10 times the taxes or get 10 times worse infrastructure. There's no cheating math.

[arethuza]

Interesting, our council tax here in Fife in Scotland is about 1% of our house valuation and that includes water supply and waste water.

[PostOnce]

The city tax isn't the only tax, they also pay county (and other?) taxes raising the total well beyond 0.5%?

[PeterisP]

Yes, but that's also an argument why "tripling the tax" isn't something impossible, since tripling the tax that goes to the city would mean a relatively small increase to the total property tax someone is paying.

[Dumblydorr]

Doesn't Illinois have pretty high taxes to begin with? I'm not a tax expert but I've heard this repeatedly stated while living in Chicago.

[wombatpm]

Illinois calculates property taxes off of 1/3 assessed value. Apparently it allows the rates to not have to go out to an insane number of digits.

But it gets weirder. The city/county/ whatever determines their budget and uses property taxes to determine how that cost is allocated across residents. What happens when housing prices fall? Simple! They take a multiplier, and increase all assessments by some factor.

People think property taxes set the budget, when in fact the budget sets properly taxes

[macinjosh]

Yeah just charge the working families just scraping by that make up a town like this 3 times more. Jobs done! /s

[kristjansson]

I don’t get that part either. OTOH, an effective property tax rate of 3.2% or so seems much more reasonable that the 9.8% percent implied by his table. Assuming people but anywhere close to as much house as they can afford, the city taking 10% per year seems just confiscatory.

[beowulfey]

See the pie chart in the post again -- citizens of Galesburg are paying 9.89% property tax on their home, not 0.5%. There are a lot of other taxes that make up the total property tax. Your 1.6% is incredibly low, in my experience.

[sackofmugs]

I don't believe their property taxes are 10%. $50,000 per year on a $500,000 home? Come on

[airza]

It would let the revenues pay for the cost of the roads in the city, but not the rest.

[Findeton]

Don't people think it's just crazy having to pay the overlords a wealth tax? One thing is to pay for capital gains or new income, but you already paid taxes when you bought the house/property.

[pessimizer]

Do you think that it costs the government more to protect a homeless person or a person with a house? Do you think it costs the government more to protect a person with a house, or a person with a mansion?

Piles of wealth require protection. Without government protection, they would be expropriated without considerable expenses on private security.

Income tax is the tax that is hard to justify. Wealth taxes are taxes to protect wealth, and sales/transaction taxes are taxes to enforce sales and transaction agreements.

Libertarians believe those should be the only functions of government. If you don't even believe in those, you're an anarchist, or maybe even a Mad Maxist.

edit: imagine the absurdity of people sharing a rented shed paying as much for fire and police protection as a person in a mansion.

[barnabee]

No, I think property (or better, land value) taxes are probably the most justifiable of all taxes.

You are occupying land, which is scarce. Noone else can use it, but except for some accident of history or geography you have no more right to one there than anyone else. It makes total sense that you compensate society for your use of the land.

There is a lot to like about Georgism.

[PostOnce]

Houses need roads and plumbing and a fire dept and electrical and all kinds of stuff, dog catchers and such.

These things aren't a buy once product, they require maintenance fees.

Civilization costs money, and its worth it.

[imtringued]

It is crazy to have private ownership over publicly funded services. The government built the infrastructure that made your plot of land valuable so it is only fair to pay a land value tax. If you don't do that then the rich will become your overlord instead and they charge as much as they can get away with.

[TulliusCicero]

No, because the services you expect from living there do need to be paid some way or other.

> One thing is to pay for capital gains or new income, but you already paid taxes when you bought the house/property.

Servicing the property obviously costs ongoing money, so why wouldn't the taxes be ongoing?

[pessimizer]

> Take for example the taxes I pay on my home. I pay $260.17 to the city every year in property taxes. I live on a 60 ft wide lot. If you take the $20/ft/year road maintenance metric, cut it in half because I’m just on one side of the street, and then multiply it by the width of my lot you get $600. I would need to contribute $600 a year through my property taxes to just pay for the maintenance of the portion of the street in front of my house. But I’m not, I’m contributing less than half. Almost no single family houses are contributing enough in property tax to support basic necessary maintenance of the street in front of their house.

> The smallest lot width you can have in Galesburg with the current zoning code is 50ft in R3 districts. With that 50 ft lot you would need a house worth $98,500 just for the city to break even on the maintenance of your portion of the street. If you have a 100ft wide lot you need an assessed value of $197,000 to break even. While wide lots may be nice to have and historically how we’ve built housing, they have a tough time paying the city back for the services they consume.

> Is every house and building going to pay for all the infrastructure it uses? No. There will be plenty that do not. Does that mean that corner lots have to be twice as valuable to pay for both the streets? Also no. Another way to look at properties in an apples to apples comparison is to use the metric of total property taxes paid per acre. Why is that? The greater the area the further road and water infrastructure needs to extend and the further away police and fire services need to travel. So comparing on a per acre basis is a good proxy for how productive it is for the city.

[tomschwiha]

But isn't it that you also need repair stuff with your house? The same for public property - it's never "finished" and needs repairing, etc.

[igorkraw]

There are people (free market people, not communists) who'd argue the idea of owning land as a private person and extracting rent/speculation is folly itself and who'd argue you should either pay much higher taxes (Georgism) or they you should only be able to lease land from the community around you.

Free market capitalism doesn't work well (in terms of social welfare) with natural monopolies, and land could be called the ultimate natural monopoly.