Property Taxes

I think they should be eliminated all together across the board, end of story. If you buy property you should own it and not have to pay what amounts to rent to the government. The thing often overlooked by many is that home ownership would sky rocket if they were eliminated because you would have an absolutely safe investment to make. Land and homes never really lose value and in my eyes there isn't a more secure investment that can be made.

The simple question is this, if I have $100K in cash and convert it to land what has changed that I now owe the government anything?

The other shoe is why do only land owners have to pay a school tax? In the Reading area where I used to live this resulted in a very high mil rate which kept going up by about 9-10% a year. At least part of this supports those who are indigent or renters or live in those areas of Reading where property values are in the toilet.

We all use the roads, the schools, the supported services. Why are property owners required to pay a disproportionate amount of the cost?

I don't know how it might be different for tenants in Reading but in most areas of the country taxes or service fees accessed against property owners is passed on to the tenant in the form of higher rent. So it's not true that "only the land owner" pays. In fact depending on how the land owner has is rental property business structured he gets the advantage of offsetting the land tax/fee assessment as a deduction on his profit/loss calculation. The tenant gets no such benefit.

As Yanche said everyone pays them and removal of them would require taxing of something else. My point being here that land or a home is probably the most important and largest investment anyone is ever going to make. I don't think it should be subject to taxation or more importantly loss of it because you couldn't afford the taxes. You're paying rent to the government, you really don't own anything.

The reason I started thinking about this was because I came across a nice piece of property that is in the clean and green program. It's 10 acres and the total tax each year is $10. If you build a house on it the taxes get assessed for the house but the rest still remains at $10. The only issue I've heard is they may retroactively apply the taxes if you take it out of the program. Wouldn't matter to me because if I was going to build on a ten acre lot I'm keeping the ten acres. The thought occurred to me it would make a very nice investment since you only have the initial cost. If I just wanted to buy this property now as an investment and not use it but still had to pay the full taxes it's pointless. Property is the only thing I can think of that you can buy that you continually have to pay tax on, if you buy a car you own it forever or until you sell it. Why should property be any different?

Granted Richard,but even w a vehicle you are paying mandated state insurance rates& mostly the ins, co's charge whatever they want--who's in bed with who on that one---then there is your state mandated inspections---the govt gets you comin & goin----but,I also agree that land is an outstanding investment--up here there are offsets to property taxes ex:age,disability,veterans,etc----who the heck knows what's worth what anymore

freetown fred wrote:Granted Richard,but even w a vehicle you are paying mandated state insurance rates& mostly the ins, co's charge

Yes but if you drop both and park it in a garage it doesn't cost anything except the taxes on the garage.

As far as I know, you can't build on clean and green unless it would be directed at agriculture. If you build you must take out of the program and pay up to 7 years of back tax as if it were not in the program (less if the property was in less than the 7 years). To be elegable it must be 10 acres or more and able to produce a crop of $2000 /year, be it corn or firewood. Be carefull if it is close to 10 acres, I know of someone that thought their property was 10, but road rightaways made it less. I have seen property like this go to a developer and they pay the taxes to build. Their is a perminent land preservation, in berks co. they pick so many farms a year and pay YOU $2000 an acre, never to be developed. This is how it was 5 years ago in berks pa. unless the laws have changed ?

Richard S. wrote: <snip>

You're paying rent to the government, you really don't own anything.

Fiat money is backed by a State or state's future tax incomes.

It's a big rabbit hole if you start looking for answers, basically we are indentured servants, we have been deceived.

Richard, did those fireman not do a half-way decent job last time you needed them? Or maybe you think they should have hauled their personal garden hoses and hoped for the best as volunteers?

Richard S. wrote:

freetown fred wrote:Granted Richard,but even w a vehicle you are paying mandated state insurance rates& mostly the ins, co's charge

Yes but if you drop both and park it in a garage it doesn't cost anything except the taxes on the garage.

Oh, if that was only true. Here in the great Commonwealth of VA we have the privilege of paying a yearly Personal Property Tax on our cars. It's due whether the car is just sitting or not. It's a percentage of the value of the car. I don't know how much it is because while the state won't do away with it, they "pay" about 1/3 of it in the form of a tax credit. That's why I will never own another new car while I live in VA. I buy used and I drive them to hell. My goal is to drive my car until they have to pay me. I drove my Toyota Tercel wagon for 12 years and 250,000 miles before it died. I still owed tax on it the last year. That year I paid $35. This year our county is bringing back our "registration fee." $33 dollars per car just for the privilege of having the car garaged in the county.

Just thinking about it burns my biscuits. Lisa

Burn my biscuits---I love that one Lisa--haven't heard it in a long time

tvb wrote:Richard, did those fireman not do a half-way decent job last time you needed them? Or maybe you think they should have hauled their personal garden hoses and hoped for the best as volunteers?

This topic is specifically about property tax, not necessarily taxes. As I noted above they would need to apply taxes somewhere else to make up for it. I don't appreciate trying to inject a personal tragedy in my life into this topic.

AA130FIREMAN wrote:This is how it was 5 years ago in berks pa. unless the laws have changed ?

I didn't thoroughly research because I'm not buying it, don't quote me on what I'm about to post. From my own research it had to be at least 10 contiguous acres and meet one of the following requirements.

• Produced $2K of profit in agriculture
• Able to produce X amount of board feet per year/acre harvesting trees, it was quite small amount. As I read it you didn't actually have to harvest any of them but even if you were going to go that route it was only a few trees per year.
• The land would need to be open to the public.

From my discussion with the realtor and other research you can build on it but they are going to fully tax you for the buildings. You're going to have ten acres so the footprint would be small anyway, plus you need to meet on of those requirements which is pretty much limits what you can do with it anyway. I'd imagine they might suntract the land you build on? Dunno... Those would have been the questions asked if I pursued it.

tvb wrote:Richard, did those fireman not do a half-way decent job last time you needed them? Or maybe you think they should have hauled their personal garden hoses and hoped for the best as volunteers?

A) That's an unfair dig at volunteer firefighters who typically do at least as good a job as a union firefighter because they are doing it because they WANT to do it and enjoy it vs. counting the days to their pension kicks in and scamming the overtime system.

and

B) Instead of property tax, you can pay a fire district tax. It would be smaller, and the fire department would be much more accountable to the public.

FYI the fire department here is 100% volunteer but they do get substantial amounts of money from the local/state/federal government for expenses, now back to property tax topic.