Few things burn my red haired ass more than the fact that I have to pay thousands of dollars in tax to live in my own home! In Wisconsin property taxes are used to fund the public schools, which really rubs it in, because all my children go to private school! When did municipalities first start with taxing private homes, and, didn’t folks scream bloody murder over it?
I think property taxes have probably existed always. I mean after the first war, the victor killed everyone and realized it was no good as he had no use for so much land himself anyway… so the next time he said, “look I’ll let you live and keep your stuff so long as you pay me homage and a fair amount of cash”. Then came the feudal system, the IRS etc, buit i doubt there’s any moment in recorded history when landowners weren’t paying some powerful guy to just leave them alone. At least now I figure I could send my kids to school if I had kids (and if public schools were any good).
Sailor is, as usual, correct again. ‘Tax’, by whatever name you wish to call it, is levied by the Alpha Male in all animal societies. Probably in EVERY lifeform in one way or another…The taller tree gets the most sun and so on.
I can pick up the story anywhere, but let’s pick a fictional western town called…er…Abilene, Kansas in the mid 19th century and make up a story. I really do know quite about the history of Abilene, so the historians out there will immediately see that these aren’t facts, they are just a story used as an illustration. ( I have to put that disclaimer in or several anal retentive members start yelling).
Municipalities started levying tax because the majority of the township wanted to hire a Marshal to keep the murder rate down so business wouldn’t suffer. Pretty soon they had to hire someone to fill in the potholes so the women could get to the barn for church services without wading in horse piss.
Eventually a city council was elected and they wanted a cut of the gambling take. After that, someone decided they needed someone to haul water in. Then someone else figured that the latrine was pretty full after all these years and everyone needed to chip in to get a new one dug.
By the time it was finished, newfangled ideas like water and sewer pipes, gaslights and fire pumpers were needed to make this town a city, so the citizens voted to all chip in a bit every year, based on what each could afford. Voila! Property tax. By the way, Abilene never got this far. They pissed the Texans off, so the boys took their cattle elsewhere.
Now just relax, pk. You need to keep paying your taxes with a smile and convince all your friends to do the same. Even though YOU might not be benefiting from all those tax dollars, if it weren’t for you and millions like you, I couldn’t be in perfect health, with a good job, and drawing welfare on the side for a woman who doesn’t exist and children I don’t have. I mean, if it weren’t for good Americans like you, I probably wouldn’t have a new Ford 4x4 Twincab and a 38’ twin-diesel sportfisher/diveboat combo. I would have had to spend all my otherwise disposable income on useless things like food and bills. So thanks, buddy!
Of course, it IS a pain in the ass to have to borrow the neighbor’s clothes and children twice a year and ride the bus down to the damn welfare office to plead for more, but it works out.
And of course property tax isn’t spent on things such as education, new schools, police, fire departments, and all those other things we don’t need. :rolleyes:
But my kids go to private school, $5200 per semester per kid. If they went to public school I’d have to shut up because I’d be using the item the property taxes pay for.
Police & fire services draw state funds here. Though I’m sure SOME property taxes aren’t used all for the schools, in this state most are. And I have no use for public schools. My biggest laugh is when someone says they own their own home. HA! Don’t pay your property taxes. We’ll see who owns your house! Then there is that HUGE $140 lottery credit we get. Whoop-de-shit!:rolleyes:
Those public schools you are ranting about are the same public schools that are educating future doctors, policemen, attorneys, scientists, contractors, truck drivers, grocery store clerks, hair dressers, dentist, garbage collectors. . . .
Do you think these employees (that you utilize services for your own personal comfort, entertainment, or even moreso, your survival) were handed over their jobs without any type of education? Do you think that the majority attended private school? Maybe you feel that these students skipped grade level schools altogether and just went into college?
All citizens are responsible for educating children whether you are childless, you have 10 kids, or you pay for private eduation. It is an investment in the entire community to make sure children get the best education possible so they may give back to society in the future.
If you don’t agree, then I assume that you do not utilize the services of anyone educated through the public school system.
Why should the rest of the tax payers cover your share of education costs when you will benefit just as much of the rest of us from the product these kids will produce in the future?
I am sure your kids are great, but paying for 2 or 3 private tuitions isn’t going to make an impact on society in comparison to the 1000+'s of highschool graduates the public school system puts out into the world every fall.
It is your responsibility as a member of society to invest in what the schools are putting out the door, just as much as the rest of us.
Fork it up and stop your whining.
All I initially asked was when property taxes first began. Any way, your insistance that I’m responsible for others education is nonsense, but my question to you is, what about renters? People who rent don’t pay property taxes, therefore, they aren’t living up to their responsibility according to you. Now, I know what you’ll say, “the appartment building they pay to live in is charged property tax, therefore, in a roundabout way, the renters do pay school tax.” But do the math. (My wifes step-mother owns several apt. buildings so I know the numbers). 20 renters live in a building which is assessed, therefore taxed, at $800,000. If those same 20 people bought a house in the same neighborhood for $100,000 each (that’s the lowest price house) the overall tax base is 2 million, not 800K!
You better go out and bitch at renters for not paying more towards the system Diane! By LOWERING property taxes, more people could afford to buy homes, and others could buy more expensive homes. This inturn would actually bring in more money to the system, and home owners make for a more stable community! Oh, and why do public employees think they should make as much money as those in the private sector? Cops, teachers, garbage and firemen are overpaid!!
eliminate all property & income taxes, and replace them with tariffs and sales taxes. Consumption taxes, based on per use not overall community use, are the fairest of all!
Peace.
Oh, get a clue. How many private fire departments are there? Cops, teachers and firemen all put their lives on the line everyday so you can sit home and bitch. They aren’t overpaid. Wait until one of your kids gets hit by a truck (God forbid) and then see how happy you are that trained paramedics arrive and transport to an emergency room full of trained staff. You obviously have the $5,200 per/kid/semester to send your children to private schools, so what is your gripe? If you don’t want to pay your share of the taxes, you don’t have to. Buy a house in Colombia or Somalia and live there, Scrooge. Geeeez, what a whiner.
I’m an American, damn it. It’s my right to Whine.
This country wasn’t started by people who were happy with what they had or what was going on. I say it isn’t right to tax a mans home.At least not at the rates I pay. Do you live in Wisconsin? The 4th highest taxed state in the nation! Why can 46 other states run with taxes lower than us? I think I have good cause to complain. Why would anyone not want more money in their pockets? Or think of it this way: If you live in one of the 46 states, would you want your taxes raised to our rates here?
I didn’t think so!
**
There you have me. Yes, it is your inalienable right.
**
No. I live in Hawai’i. Wanna trade taxes? Are you in a Gulag in Wisconsin, or do you choose to live there? Alaska and Nevada, among others, might be less expensive.
**
How much money do you need anyway? I live on a pretty fixed income and I have everything I could reasonably want.
Fortunately I am able to choose where I live and I guess you too could move elsewhere if you wanted. I suppose if my wife’s mother had .8 mil worth of income property I could crab about how much tax I had to pay, but I would look like an idiot if I did.
Just go along and be quiet. Isn’t that what dictators (and those who enjoy their life under one) tend to say?
I like living in Milwaukee, and am a proud Wisconsinite. But I am not the only one here who is over taxed, or who complains about it! Our income is taxed higher, our sales tax is higher (6.1%)and our property taxes are higher than 92% of the nation. Whatever your taxes are, I’ll bet they may be lower, but they are probably still too high! I would like to see more money in your pocket too. We need to cut government spending. It CAN be done!
pkbites:
Gee, do you think it might have arisen from statements such as “Few things burn my red haired ass more than the fact that I have to pay thousands of dollars in tax to live in my own home!”
Just to be 100% clear about it, not in General Questions it’s not. You have an unfortunate propensity to ask perfectly good (in fact, quite good) questions surrounded by opinions and rants. Then you wonder why people bite at the rant rather than the question. Perhaps some more work on the phrasing of your questions would increase the relevance of the responses you receive.
pkbites
A few minutes with a good search engine would show that a state, such as New Hampshire, mandated a property tax based on property value as early as 1789. Many colonies empowered their local government to collect money for hiring a schoolmaster much earlier, but just phrasing it as an assessment on the population, without mentioning property as a basis for amount taxed.
Thus, most early settlements in this country valued education, and instructed their local leaders/governments to raise money to support public education.
Now, you can further rant and rave about how you shouldn’t have to support public education with your tax dollars because you choose(and evidently make enough money) to send your children to private school. This, of course, is one of the greatest debates currently going in the US(vouchers, etc.). I sympathize with your frustration, but suggest that, under our system of government, you are probably SOL.
And, in case you didn’t read about it, you no onger pay more than 50% of your property tax to fund schools in Wisconsin. The Legislature passed an act in 1997 mandating that two-thirds of school expenditures must be funded by the State.
Let’s see–if you eliminated your personal property tax and your income tax in Wisconsin, you’d probably have to pay 20% sales tax. Then you’d just bitch about how much you pay in sales tax. And calling consumption taxes the fairest of all taxes flies in the face of what I learned in school. At least my memory is that those are regressive taxes.
Then you also drag out some statistic that claims Wisconsin is the fourth highest taxed state in the US. In what respect?? You are 19th in sales/use tax, 12th in gasoline tax, 49th in beer tax(don’t shit where you eat), and I don’t feel like searching any longer, but I doubt that you are in the top 5% in state income tax(I could be wrong).
Personal property taxes are not so much a function of the state in which you live, as the community in which you live. You get wounderful services, I’m sure, compared to the town of Pacific, Wisconsin, in Columbia County, wherein the people pay about 25% of your personal property taxes. You live in Milwaukee, probably a nicer upscale section of the town based on the fact that you have $20K a year extra
to send your kids to private schools. I live on 20K/year, disposable income, and help raise my three kids on this. I only wish I had your problem.
If I remember correctly, Wisconsin has the lowest tax of all US States on cheese at 0%.
Property tax is as old as the hills. Land is almost always associated with wealth and it can’t be hidden from tax assessors- hence it is convienent to tax.
“And, in case you didn’t read about it, you no longer pay more than 50% of your property tax to fund schools in Wisconsin. The Legislature passed an act in 1997 mandating that two-thirds of school expenditures must be funded by the State”
Could you clarify that a little sam ? Seems like the state could fund 2/3 of school expenditures and yet all of your property taxes could still go to fund the other third.
funnee I didn’t think I could get away clean with that
If anyone can explain to me how you get the State to increase their responsibility but still your property tax remains about the same, I would love to know. One assumes that property tax goes into a state fund, and is sent back out to the local taxing districts at some proportional rate, while trying to equalize poorer communities.
Perhaps this is just an accounting sleight-of-hand?
Samclem,
Property tax may not go to the state at all. I live in NYC(talk about high taxes).My property taxes, however are very low ($1100/yr),in comparison to the surrounding suburbs,and to my knowledge, aren’t sent to the state.The suburbs ( to the best of my knowledge -NYC is always different from the rest of the state) usually have a property tax paid to either the city, town or county, and a separate school tax, which depends on the school district (which may include more than one town).The state funding comes from the state’s revenue, (state taxes,lottery proceeds,etc)If NYS was to raise the state funding for education, the school taxes wouldn’t rise ( but the revenue from the state income tax would rise, or funding would be cut for something else, etc.)
pkbites,tenants may not pay property tax directly, but they sure do indirectly. If the property tax on your mother-in-law’s building went up $2000/year, you can bet she’d raise the rent to cover it.In your example , you’re comparing the assessed value of that building with the market value of the buildings the tenants could buy. Apples and oranges. You have to compare assessed to assessed or market to market. Would she sell the building for $800,000 or could she get much more?Would those $100,000 houses be assessed at $100,000 or would it be less?
Local governments only have so many ways to raise necessary funds.Truthfully, I don’t think depending heavily on property taxes is the fairest way, ( one persons could be much wealthier than their next door neighbor,yet pay the same tax), but neither is depending mostly on sales taxes (people with a low income will pay a higher percentage of their income in tax,since you don’t pay sales taxes on money you invest or save}.That leaves income or personal property taxes.