Quote:
Originally posted by Young,
In a Rural countryside a Golf Course is built, and as people begin to build homes Land Prices are Raised thus raising the Tax. So these people push the Poor out of Land they've always Owned, simply because they can. In order to prevent this an entire community must be strong enough so that everyone can resist selling Land and allowing these kinds of takeovers to begin. By the time most of Us retire Social Security will no longer exist, but still we're forced to pay into it. Many retired people count on Social Security to assist them in paying their Land Tax, so what will We depend on? Imagine an Elderly couple barely able to pay for Food, and Medical expenses finding themselves being Taxed out of the Land they've owned all of their Lives. I feel that Land should only be taxed during the Initial sale, and I really don't think Rich people should be capable of having an Agenda to Tax people out of Land.
Young |
The big problem with your theory is that if the properties have increased in value to the degree that that the increase in taxes is making the cost of living unbearable, then the people are no longer poor, they have significant assets in the value of the property. They can sell the property and move to a less expensive area with a nice bit of cash left over. Alternately, they can leverage the value of their property to expand their income potential.
Further, that's really not the way it happens. "The rich" don't have the power of taxation, we aren't in the feudal period anymore. Taxes don't go up with land prices, taxes go up with increases in spending at the local government level. Even if the value of a property increases twofold, unless the property is sold it would require the property being reassessed before the tax base would be increased.
To futher pick apart your argument, it's based on nothing more than an appeal to emotion, and a flimsy one at that. You haven't pointed out *why* this form of taxation is worse than any other. Retired and poor people would be equally burdened by a substantive use tax, a substantive income tax (unless they managed to vote in exemptions for themselves, in which case they're simply shrugging their tax burden onto another class), or really any other tax.