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The Supreme Court should take up the idea of property taxes. If you have to pay taxes on property do you really own that property?

• cool_dude85 3y ago
  Yes. What's the alternative answer? What proposed relationship do you identify between paying taxes on something and the ownership of that thing?
  • tick_tock_tick 3y ago
    > What's the alternative answer? Property taxes, and hopefully all forms of wealth taxes, are unconstitutional and local towns / state must find an alternative method of funding themselves such as higher income tax, sales, VAT, etc.
    • cool_dude85 3y ago
      Maybe there's a legal argument in the Constitution, I'm not a lawyer. What is baffling me is the idea that if you must pay a tax on something you don't own it. It seems like more of a philosophical claim than a legal one, but I can't imagine any basis to claim that it's true.
      • ghaff 3y ago
        A lot of things related to property ownership among other assets are ultimately philosophical. Although given that land (and other wealth) taxes have been around for something like six thousand years I don't see them going away soon.
      • ifyoubuildit 3y ago
        I think it comes from people operating on different definitions. The word own, at least as I learned it, means you alone have control of the thing, and it can't be taken from you unless you agree to give it away. Other people seem to have a different definition, and I can't easily put it to words. Something like "you have some control of this thing and you can keep that control as long as you meet some list of conditions". I find it hard to argue against calling that something closer to renting than owning. I don't know. How would you define ownership?
        • yamtaddle 3y ago
          > The word own, at least as I learned it, means you alone have control of the thing, and it can't be taken from you unless you agree to give it away. This definition sucks because it's not the case practically anywhere, and I don't think making up some new word for what everyone means by "own" just so the "more rational than thou" set can take the word "own" to mean this nearly-useless-because-practically-nonexistent phenomenon, is helpful.
          • ifyoubuildit 3y ago
            I'm thinking more from the mindset of a child. As a child, all of my little posessions were mine, and I could share them (or not) as I saw fit. At some point, you become exposed to the real world and realize that it's really difficult to own anything like that, especially in a world where so many things are financed or come with subscriptions and cloud connections. But that first understanding of the concept still sticks.
        • cool_dude85 3y ago
          Can you point to any object, maybe outside of your body or intangible asset within your mind, that you "own" by this definition? That debtors and the courts can under no circumstances seize? If not, I would say your definition is bogus.
          • ifyoubuildit 3y ago
            Interesting question. How about things that nobody knows you have? These would probably tend to be smaller things just because its easier for them to go unnoticed, and if nobody knows about them, they wouldn't have any reason or ability to take them from you. I'm curious how you would define ownership?
            • cool_dude85 3y ago
              This can't be a satisfying answer, otherwise you could "own" your land now, by your understanding, as long as it's done through enough overseas shell corps and so on. And still have to pay property taxes as per usual.
      • somenameforme 3y ago
        Imagine you decide to go 'soul searching', bought up a sizable chunk of land, packed up on goods, gave away everything else, and decided to just live off your land for a couple of years. By the time you got back to society, you'd probably find that "your" land was no longer yours. Unless you decided to stop what you were doing, go earn some USD, and give it to the government - they would seize your land. So it's really no different than rent. Incidentally this is not inherent. If tax were assessed in some way like min(5%_of_disposable_income, assessed_property_tax) then I think there'd be a much stronger argument of ownership, in spite of the fact that in the vast majority of scenarios there would be exactly 0 difference. But take our little scenario above. Just want to check out of society for a bit? You'd be absolutely free to do so, and when you came back your land would would still be your land. In fact it would never be taken from you except in some scenario where you broke the law, such as by tax evasion.
        • cool_dude85 3y ago
          Imagine a world where there are no taxes whatsoever, incredibly however a functional government with courts and such still exists. You buy a piece of land and go soul searching for a few years and come back to find you no longer own the land. Somebody you did wrong in the past sued you and won a judgement, got a lien against your land and sold it to make himself partially whole. Would you say that you did not "own" this land, you were just renting it?
    • robcohen 3y ago
      Seems like quite the claim. I could conceivably see the argument against federal taxes, but state taxes? There’s no right to be free from taxes enshrined in the bill of rights.
    • root_axis 3y ago
      Why are wealth taxes unconstitutional?
      • ke88y 3y ago
        Property taxes are not unconstitutional. Particularly state property taxes, which under even the most revisionist possible reading are very clearly not prohibited by the US constitution. In fact, at least one type of property tax is specifically enumerated in the constitution (Section 9)! So the notion that the founding fathers believed property taxes were unconstitutional -- while also enumerating a specific type of property tax in the constitution -- is ridiculous. IMO, if an extreme SCOTUS attempted to kill all forms of property taxes, a collective decision by legislatures and the executive to selectively ignore Marbury v Madison would be a more likely outcome than the end of property taxes. In general: the idea that the judiciary can "strike down" unconstitutional laws is much more tenuous than most of the things that fringe constitutional theories consider to be unconstitutional. I think this is where fantasies like ending property taxes or sovereign citizen stuff fall apart: if we're going to stretch the meaning of the constitution that far, then why continue putting so much unenumerated power into the judiciary? Also: taxing income without taxing property is ridiculously stupid public policy. We should be doing exactly the opposite: rewarding hard work and severely punishing lazy lay-abouts who sit around on generational properties instead of contributing to society by working and earning an income.
        • tick_tock_tick 3y ago
          Calling tariffs, what I assume you are referring too, a property tax is a bit of a stretch.
          • ke88y 3y ago
            No. Section 9 literally uses the word “tax”, and states that a "tax or duty" may be imposed, drawing an explicit distinction between "tax" and "duty" and thereby directly addressing potential misunderstandings such as yours. Section 9 VERY explicitly and VERY carefully allows for a property tax which is not a duty. Why would the framers include this clause, as written, if they believed it unconstitutional for Congress to enact property taxes? At the very least you would expect an exceptional clause if that were the case. This strains credulity, to put it mildly. State property taxes existed in the US for 100 years before and also during the constitutional convention. It strains credulity to claim that the framers intended for state property taxes to be unconstitutional while also not enumerating this fact and even specifically enumerating limits on taxation of certain types of property. Furthermore, the legislative and executive actions of constitutional convention members, within their respective commonwealths and states, clearly demonstrate that the framers did not intend to prohibit taxation of property particularly by non-federal governments (or even by the federal government, for that matter, as long as funds were equally distributed). Again, it strains credulity to claim that a framer would write a constitution intended to prevent states from taxing property, and then go serve in a state legislative assembly or executive that approved taxation based on the value of estates or properties. And we haven't even made it to the 9th amendment. Again: I'm much more willing to accept that Marbury v Madison was a mistaken interpretation of the constitution than I am to accept the US constitution can be somehow interpreted to disallow state property taxes. To be blunt, if SCOTUS tried to do something this blatantly ridiculous and made-up, most state governments and courts would simply ignore the ruling.
    • ghaff 3y ago
      So my town has basically no commercial activity so sales/VAT/etc. is out. And while I don't know what the laws are for a local income tax, it's certainly extremely rare and, even if it could be done legally, it would be a huge transfer from working people to those who were retired, etc.
    • jandrese 3y ago
      On the contrary in a capitalist society wealth taxes are the most moral taxes. The reason is that capitalism is inherently self reinforcing, if you have money you can make money. This causes a feedback loop that accelerates wealth upward until you end up in a feudal state. So it is the moral duty of the state to push wealth back down to keep the system from collapsing. Taxes need to be focused on passive sources of income like investments. Income that is generated by work that produced goods or services should be minimally taxed to encourage more of those activities.
    • cafard 3y ago
      Isn't this subject to the sort of argument that Lincoln used in his Cooper Union speech? The signers and drafters of the Constitution mostly came from states that taxed property. They ruled out a federal property tax, it is true.
  • causi 3y ago
    Are there any other possessions subject to an unlimited amount of tax? Arguably you don't own land, you just rent it from the government. However, logically speaking, you should only be paying tax based on the value of the ground and nothing else. The current scheme is rather perverse. I do work, earn income, pay income tax. Buy a house, pay transfer tax, then pay tax on it again as my property value goes up. Buy tree seedlings, pay sales tax. The same dollar is taxed for income, taxed again for sales, then taxed a third time after I plant them thereby increasing the value of my property. No wonder our society is dividing into people who own nothing and pay nothing and people who own everything and do everything they can to pay nothing.
    • fnordpiglet 3y ago
      Automobiles, boats, airplanes, essentially most large capital assets are potentially subject to a form of property tax depending on local law.
    • vuln 3y ago
      Vehicles. Taxes paid when purchased, taxes paid on maintenance, taxes paid on fuel, yearly personal property tax, yearly registration (tax), insurance (tax)
    • pydry 3y ago
      I strongly doubt property taxes anywhere exceed the rental value of the land.
      • causi 3y ago
        I'm just trying to live on it. I find the entire concept of using a fundamentally scarce resource like land to generate profit by being a middle-man perverse.
        • slowmovintarget 3y ago
          It's not for profit though. Presumably there are city services involved (fire, police, emergency), civil utilities (water and sewage perhaps, electricity), and state defense. You're paying to live in that environment created by the government around that parcel, not just on that parcel.
• yardie 3y ago
  There is property in east Texas. No water, no roads, no electricity, no police nor fire department. You are truly on your own. You pay for nothing and you pay for everything. You don’t pay property taxes to own the land. You pay taxes for all those services modern civilised society wants.
• HDThoreaun 3y ago
  It's utterly immoral to allow people to own land. Land is a unique asset that belongs to society and letting anyone think otherwise was a massive mistake. The government allows people to enter into perpetual leases, but that's it. Private ownership is useful as an incentive to create things. Land isn't created so it can't be owned.
  • imtringued 3y ago
    Ownership of land is an illogical concept anyway. The government doesn't own the land either, it is merely protecting it from intruders and enforcing the law it wrote. There are lots of stories about aboriginees being surprised that they could sell something they believed they didn't own. From a simple arithmetic perspective, a land "owner" that doesn't pay at least the guard labor necessary to protect the land, will eventually lose that land. If we assume that military expenditures are paid by working income tax payers, then the guard labor would no longer be paid by its beneficiary and over the long run this disequilibrium will be eliminated through a revolution or war. In the latter case, the attacker values the land more than the "owner" and therefore it is "profitable" to acquire it by expensing the full amount of guard labor to "defend" it from the weaker army of the original owner.
    • yamtaddle 3y ago
      > Ownership of land is an illogical concept anyway. The government doesn't own the land either, it is merely protecting it from intruders and enforcing the law it wrote. I don't see how this doesn't extend to all property. If it does, perhaps ownership is "logically" impossible, so we're going to need a new word to mean what everyone's using "ownership" to mean now, because it's a useful word.
      • slowmovintarget 3y ago
        The damage Rousseau has done... Give me Locke and hands off my bought and paid for hat rest.
        • 3y ago
• JustSomeNobody 3y ago
  How else do you propose the local government recoups the cost for making sure you get all the benefits that come with living in a society?
  • tastyfreeze 3y ago
    Charge fees for specific utilized services like any business would.
    • JustSomeNobody 3y ago
      Oh good grief! You cannot be serious!?
      • tastyfreeze 3y ago
        I am. I would rather pay an itemized bill for services rendered than a tax that goes to whatever the tax collector wants to spend it on.
• Entinel 3y ago
  > If you have to pay taxes on property do you really own that property? A different way of looking at this is that I'm letting you own a piece of land within my borders and in exchange I'm asking you pay a tax on it and if that isn't agreeable find a different settlement.
• trylfthsk 3y ago
  The consequences of having zero property tax are (maybe unintuitively) extremely awful. Ignoring all of the arguments regarding commons and market liquidity, you essentially cede enormous amounts of power to large landholders who can cheaply (relative to the average citizen) monopsonize local real estate markets. EDIT: Maybe in practice oligopsonize, but either way on a long timescale you can say goodbye to widespread freeholding.
• squokko 3y ago
  No, you don't really "own" it. Land ownership is a pretend game we play to incentivize things like building structures on land.
• thephyber 3y ago
  This same SCOTUS recently ruled that women don’t have a constitutional right to privacy nor medical autonomy because they cherry-picked a time when state tradition curtailed their ability to abort a pregnancy. The founding fathers oversaw a tradition of property taxes in the USA. > Property taxes in the United States originated during colonial times.[64] By 1796, state and local governments in fourteen of the fifteen states taxed land https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_S...
• ChumpGPT 3y ago
  There is no such thing as private property in America. The government owns everything regardless of what you think is yours, because you paid for it and were given a paper that states you payed for it.
• oluwie 3y ago
  Yea, that's a bad idea that's ben tried over and over again throughout history to really bad outcomes. It's call feudalism. It was a bad idea then, it's a bad idea now. No property taxes means property will just sit in families for generations b/c there's no incentive to sell and the money generated will be in the same hands perpetually. Really bad idea.