Suspicious-Teach8788
Lifer
- Feb 19, 2001
- 20,155
- 23
- 81
I'm addressing the fact that people who bought their homes a long time ago are not paying their fair share of taxes. They do not pay taxes on what their home is worth.
I pay taxes on what my home is worth.
Are you able to discuss this fact or not?
Once you can we can move on to the other negative effects.
Ok, Prop 13 has its negative effects, but realize this: While they are paying little taxes today, with property values the way they are today, there are millions of homeowners who purchased in the last 5-10 years that completely dominate the bulk of taxes anyway.
What percentage of revenue COMES from those who pay property taxes on a $5000 home from 1950? Tell me? Our $700k house from 1997 or something is already killing us. Tell me how we're supposed to cope with property values rising to $2.2 million before the 2008 crash? We would be absolutely broke.
Yes, buying a $2 million house today would be a different story, and we'd have to rethink what we can afford based on property taxes for today's property values, but if you bought a $300k house 15 years ago, which is already FAR MORE than what the nation has to deal with, would you be screwed out of your mind when your property value triples? What do you do then? Move the hell out? Prop 13 protects this.
Now there's the argument that Prop 13 CAUSED property values to skyrocket. Why? Because if there's no property tax holding you back, your property value can shoot up with no worries. I'd like to see more studies done on this.
But the bottom line is even with certain negatives and positives of Prop 13, CA residents pay a buttload of taxes:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Taxes/Advice/PropertyTaxesWhereDoesYourStateRank.aspx
Shows it.
While as a % of house value, CA ranks low because of Prop 13, the dollar amount puts CA near the top. Dollar amount matters in the end. If you want % of house value near the top, then CA's dollar amount property tax would be like 3x of any other state because we all know that property values here are many times higher.
Dollar amount PER house is what you need to run a state.... or really dollar amount in property taxes per person. If CA in pure dollar/property is doing near the top, then how can you say this state is running broke on Prop 13. Property taxes pay for law enforcement, schools, etc, local crap. Do we need it to be 3x as high of other states to pay for these things? Obviously not. CA makes enough money from Prop 13.
You can make arguments saying Prop 13 is good or bad. We may need to repeal it sometime later, but as it stands now, I don't see how the state should be running broke when we're in the top 20% for property tax dollar amount.
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