Thursday, May 07, 2015

We're Not Taxed Enough Here In California, According to Liberals

Proposition 13 passed in 1978 because government was raising property taxes so high, so fast, that people--especially the elderly on fixed incomes--couldn't afford to keep their homes.  It was a limit on runaway government.  Oh yes, it was an imperfect limit, as California is still one of the highest-taxed states in the country, but at least it allows people to keep their homes by limiting tax increases to 2% per year.  There's a move afoot to undermine Prop 13 by changing the limit increases on commercial buildings, but make no mistake about it:  if you give an inch, they'll take a mile.  One crack in that dam and whole thing will eventually burst.

And who wants to take that first inch, make that first crack?  The California Teachers Association, among others:
A coalition of public employee unions and other liberal groups, including many churches, launched a campaign Thursday to alter Proposition 13, California’s iconic property tax limit, and raise billions of dollars by hiking taxes on commercial property.

The organization, Make It Fair, is headed by unions, including the California Teachers Association and the Service Employees International Union, which would be the main source of millions of dollars to qualify the initiative for the 2016 ballot and campaign for its passage.

The proposed measure would remove Proposition 13’s limits on what the organization considers to be commercial property – industrial, retail and office complexes, mostly – while leaving them in place for owner-occupied homes, residential rental properties and agricultural land.

If enacted, the Proposition 13 revision would raise as much as $9 billion a year that advocates say are needed to adequately finance schools and improve local government services.
How high are California's business taxes already, such that so many of our businesses are fleeing to Nevada and Texas?

This is a stupid idea.

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article20431737.html#storylink=cpy
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1 comment:

  1. maxutils1:20 AM

    I hope, by now, that you know my general position on taxes: one single tax, broken up between Federal, state, and local, and progressive … so I would eliminate property taxes all together. Yet another tax geared towards the poor, but built into rents so that you can't write them off … and the 'renter's credit'? 60 bucks a year, much less thanyou're paying, and you only get that much if you're REALLY poor.

    Prop 13 is a always vilified, wrongly.Pre prop 13, ypiu had to pay 1.5% of a home value which someone MIGHT offer you …Which can be anything. And, when you have the housing market collapse, as it just did, you can ask to have the new value considered -- but I wager that about half the homeowners in the state know that. So -- it was a very good thing, but it also happened at a time when localities used it as the foundation of funding for their schools -- before the Supreme Court of A CA ruled it unconstitutional (and rightly so; poor districts had much less to spend than rich.) So that'why the CTA hates it.

    So, I want to be with you on this … but I can't. Because the way Prop13 works on homes is VERY different than the way it works for businesses. In the case of a home, you can transfer it to a spouse or an heir without reassessment. That's pretty lear, and very fair, and not prone to treachery… if you sell the property, it gets reassessed at a much higher value, but that's okay, too, because the buyer takes the increased taxes into consideration.

    But business … there are loopholes in how the business can be legally transferred that do not apply the same way they do to homes. I understand the slippery slope argument-- but you're comparing apples and oranges. And if we used my system? We wouldn't care.

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