Submitted 2 days ago by Mickey7@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/df71fdb1-3bb6-414b-b89a-658fb8efb7e2.jpeg
So he bought a house for 6k 50 years go and now has to pay 2k in property taxes each year. If he was renting that wouldn’t cover two months.
Does he also complain that the sales tax on candy bar is more than he used to pay for a candy bar when he first bought his house?
The real problem if that’s the scenario is that his social security check is less than $100/month.
“I don’t understand how inflation works and I’m blaming government for it”
If the property tax scales with inflation and social security is also adjusted for inflation, but your property tax is getting more expensive relative to your social security income, something’s not right.
You have to think more like Trump, LOL. The rich don’t pay any taxes through the use of loopholes. Why should you. Slum lords should be forced to pay taxes, not working class schmo that needs a roof over their heads. Tax the slum lords.
I went and argued my taxes at my annual township tax assessment meeting. I was being assessed for a new deck and ramp. That added about $200 to my taxes. What I did do was move the wheelchair ramp out away from the house a bit for better winter time safety and repaired the steps, ramp boards, and railings.
Should I have been taxed for a whole new deck and ramp when I just did repairs and made safety changes?
So property tax I am ok with, in theory. The people with property in a city should pay for services like fire, schools, police, road maintenance… What gets me is when the city wants more and more for stupid shit like iPads for all students… Every 3 years due to forced upgrades or just old style deprecation over 3 years.
The amount my taxes go up each year is more than any raise I get. Then add on insurance which has gone insane. I paid off my house to avoid a 20k female flood insurance bill because a 1 foot piece of concrete touched a high risk flood zone. A technicality because if I took down a screen patio, then I wouldn’t have to pay.
It’s insane how expensive owning a house has become
I paid off my house to avoid a 20k female flood insurance bill
Female flood sounds interesting
Did they mean FEMA, and autocorrect “completed” it?
Dont forget increased pay for public servants who more and more act like they dont work for the public
It doesn’t make sense that cities need to increase property taxes every year though
Property tax revenue should be increasing every year by default without changing the rate simply because houses and properties increase in value every year typically
If property tax is 5% and the town makes $100,000,000, the next year if property value increases by 5% then their revenue goes up 5% as well to $105,000,000 automatically. Why do they need to also increase the tax to 6%?
Every 3 years due to forced upgrades or just old style deprecation over 3 years.
iPads don’t deprecate in 3 years, nor require forced upgrades. They get nowhere near as much support as a regular Linux laptop (which is what schools SHOULD be using) and even less than Windows laptops pre-11, but if they’re being replaced every 3 years, that’s just policy, not an actual need. Currently the oldest supported iPad is going to hit 8 years since release in a month. The newest unsupported one is going to hit 9 in a month. So yes there’s forced upgrades, but that’s in like 8 years.
I work as a software engineer and most companies have had a minimum 3 year lifetime policy for company laptops. Reasoning being, after 3 years there’s a higher chance of failure, and there have been enough advancements in hardware that upgrading might save SOME dev time. If it fails before 3 years, you get a new one. If you want to keep it longer, you can keep it. But if you want a new one, it should be 3 years old first. I don’t get why school iPads need to be replaced this often, but I reckon there might be a lot more wear and tear and THAT could be the reason for a 3 year replacement policy. It’s simpler than just replacing individual units every now and then.
I have taught math for 4 years in my local school. The iPads were used by the 3rd and 4th grade students. And they never left the classrooms and were well supervised during use.
Starting in 5th grade, they were issued Chromebooks. Google Classroom was used for assignments and other communications. And since Mommy and Daddy had to pay for them IF they were damaged, they held up quite well. The IBM Education model is very robust. Not fast, but robust.
Yea generally electronics is depreciated every 3 to 5 years. But I can imagine that after 3 years of children usage they are done for. That aside though, I think what you would be more looking for is a fair tax system.
What I think that the problem with local property taxes is that if a city relies on it too much to pay for everything then this causes too many issues. For a poor city this could mean that if they don’t increase the taxes they can’t afford basic school care which people expect. So they moved to riched areas who can provide that. Or they move because of the higher taxes. This in turn lowers the property value and decreases the taxes further. Which in turn increases the problem.
So I believe the educational budget should be provided by the central government so the same kind of quality in schools is given nationwide. This can of course be applied to other costs a city is making.
In addition to this I think a property tax should be progressive and link to your overall assets. If you just own one house and you don’t have any more assets. Then why should you be taxed as much as somebody who owns a lot more (of course if the house is 2m and you’re living of social security it is a different story. L
Top down education doesn’t work, that’s how we get stuck with schools that have massive IT budgets with little to show for them. Most teachers don’t use anything beyond spreadsheets and Youtube.
I don’t think that there is an easy fix.
I’d like to think local autonomy would help, so small communities could design their own curriculum, but I’m too much of a pessimist and see such experiments failing quickly because of corruption and incompetence.
Yea generally electronics is depreciated every 3 to 5 years.
Not really.
But I can imagine that after 3 years of children usage they are done for. That aside though
It’d be cheaper to protect the devices with cases and screen protectors.
For many states property taxes are the majority of funding for public schools. If that’s the case for the pictured person, the sign could also read:
“I got my public education for free from age 5-18 funded by property taxes including learning how to read and write to make this sign you’re reading. Now that I’ve received that free public education and benefited from it, I’m not interested in paying for any kids to be educated using my dollars. F you I go mine.”
We could also just pay for education differently.
Yes and. How most of the US funds their school system is super fucked up. Here in Canada, primary education is paid for by the province, and school funding is based on student enrollment numbers. This translates to much more equal levels of education, regardless of how wealthy a given neighborhood may be. I was shocked to find out that schools are paid for by catchment area taxes in must of the states - it makes the history of redlining so obvious when the is literally a “wing side of the tracks”.
I love the “but it pays for schools” argument, like how about we drop 3 less bombs per year and just pay for all the schools out of the existing tax pool like it should be.
Until we do, we can’t stop the current funding source. Feel free to present your argument on your proposed alternate method.
Comparing property taxes now in 2025 dollars to unadjusted original cost in 1950 dollars is nonsensical. The two numbers bear no relation nor should they.
The average social security check is $1,978 a month or $23,736 per annum. Half of that is $11,868. Lets suppose he lives in CA where the annual rate for owner occupied is 0.74%. His house would be worth approx 1.6 million dollars. To to be clear he is whining about paying the appropriate and legal tax on his fully owned 1.6M cash hoard. This is a great problem to have.
If its that burdensome he can cash out and even with rent payments for the rest of his life live great even if he has no other savings of any sort.
Looks like about $5800 a month gradually increasing with inflation for at least 25 years.
If he has another $400,000 which seems super likely since I don’t think he’s actually living in his 1.6M house on $12,000 a year it could be more than 7500 a month.
If we add a little realism and only include another 15 years he could probably actually withdraw about 11,000 a month.
kiplinger.com/…/average-monthly-social-security-c… www.tax-rates.org/…/property-tax-by-state
I think it’s the moral issue of having to cash out your own property to afford to live in something you built and already own
Property tax funds important things like schools, emergenct services, etc.
if he was destitute otherwise would already have sold it. You are arguing in favor of a tax break for some rich prick probably worth north of 3 million not paying the taxes that pay for your kid to get a decent education because basically feels.
Its no more immoral than you giving up your income.
Seconded. This is inaccessible net worth. It is useless to someone who cannot take advantage of it. Sale would incur capital gains, which would be significant, and finding another property to live in would be just as unaffordable.
Lets suppose he lives in CA where the annual rate for owner occupied is 0.74%. His house would be worth approx 1.6 million dollars.
That’s largely due to the property inflation from the tech sector and not consistent across the state. You could be in San Fransisco and see your land 10x in value as the city explodes around you or you could be at the ass end of Oakland or the rural east end and still live in a slum.
This guy could also be from Texas - in the exurbs of Austin, Dallas, Houston, or El Paso - and be looking at closer to 1.5-2% annual rates. Very possible he acquired some dirt cheap land in Beaumont or Bexar County only to see his $5k plot balloon to $100-200k over the course of 20 years.
Either way for California he wouldn’t be affected because Californiamnproperty taxes are effectively snapshotted at time of purchase and grandfathered for people like him. If he truly bought or built 50 years ago and ows it outright then prop 13 has long capped what he pays decades ago.
People like him, in California, are subsidized by the modern generation who don’t get capped by prop 13. And when he sells that house it’s value gets assessed at current market value and full taxes are due from the buyer.
Put shortly, his story is likely bullshit if he’s from California. And people without houses and salty about it need to do some research.
If this was so it wouldn’t be half his ss in property taxes. Average ss is 1900 a month
Property tax is the big thing that forces people to engage with capitalism against their will.
Without property tax, you could live off-grid for eternity. But with property tax, you always have to earn money, and the people that control that money therefore control you.
without property tax, all land would be owned by corporations whether or not they planned on using it ever….
but an individual living on a property shouldn’t have to pay property tax on their home.
the guy in the picture could have 100 acre of unused land he’s holding on to, too….
another fun one is some cities will seize your property for being $1 off on your property tax payments.
He could also just be in an area that was decently outside a major metro area when he bought his house, and urban sprawl and real estate speculation has massively raised the value of his property.
When my parents bought my childhood home in the 80s, the road ended about a mile down from the house and they had to park at the lake and carry things up. There’s a hunting preserve just on the other side of the train tracks to the north, and when I was growing up, farms with cows, horses, and a shitload of corn.
These days, I don’t know anyone I grew up with who can afford to live there any more, as it’s become yet another commuter town in the country for the higher paid employees in the nearest major city. When they sold the house, I’m pretty sure it had to be knocked down completely (we had squirrels in the walls, and the previous owner had done a hack job on the electrical wiring to convert it from a summer cottage to a full-time residence) yet a half acre of land and a house you couldn’t legally sell for occupation was still close to $500,000.
I can actually rent a two bedroom apartment in NYC for less than it would cost me to rent a studio in my home town, which has no public transport, and it was a two mile walk to the nearest gas station, one way.
It’s kind of messed up that entire communities can be destroyed, through nothing they actually did and developments they had no way of predicting 40 years ago.
You’d have to earn the money to purchase your off-grid setup in the first place.
Outside of fantasy no that is just nonsense
This isn’t a discussion on property tax, it’s more about social security. There is no reason we cannot scale taxes/fines to income. Many countries pull this off…
bUt tHeN nO oNe wOuLd bE iNcEnTiViSeD tO wOrK oR bEcOmE wEaLtHy
We would need to make sure all loopholes are closed for wealthy people just using investments to harvest losses… Trump only needed to pay $750 in taxes on his “taxable” income one year.
And this is why in most civilized countries, progressive income taxes make up the majority of the government budget. Basing taxes on non income/investment related metrics screws over the poor + lower middle class. It’s a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
you could have progressive taxes on wealth as well. there’s a difference between having one house worth 500k and having 500 million in shares
True, you just need to make sure you start high enough up, or exempt the value of a primary residence (maybe limit the exemption to a non-opulent value of a house so the richest don’t start building castles to bind their money tax free)
This doesn’t fit the narrative, but a lot of American states have lower effective property tax rates than European nations. There exceptions on both ends of this of course (like TX which is making up for a lack of income taxes).
People should look them up and compare European nations to major us cities and states. Europe ends up with not only higher income taxes, but also higher property taxes overall. And a completely insane financing method like having adjustable rate mortgages being normal, locked only for a period of 3 to 5 years before basically being forced to refinance. Little wonder that property ownership rates are generally so far below american ownership rates.
No system is perfect and people with means tend to find every flaw in them (and plant those flaws if they are wealthy enough). But people really need to remember that the grass is always greener because of all the manure.
And that man clearly does not live in such a state, nor did I (or anyone else I think) claim that his circumstances apply to the entire usa. You’re wrong in assuming that other people are not aware that different places have varying laws and tax systems.
Your whataboutism defence of regressive tax systems is also very strange to me. That other places have unfair practices in place, is no excuse to put up with an unfair system in any one place. Call them all out on their brokeness, but if you do call them out, you’ll have to be more specific in your example(s), state things that are actually verifiable instead of some vague whataboutism.
Ps, while I did not think your whataboutism defence was relevant, this “Little wonder that property ownership rates are generally so far below american ownership rates.” was easy to verify and it turned out to be false. Home ownership rates are on average slightly higher in Europe than in the usa, here’s statistics: statista.com/…/home-ownership-rate-in-europe/ fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
UK has property taxes too and its pretty shit tbh. Council tax, there are bands based on what your house was worth in the 90s (yes really…) and generally the poor will pay a higher % of their income. I have a pretty small bungalow, 60m². One of the lowest bands and pay £1600 a year on a house that cost £230k. The most you can have to pay is £4200, beyond that point regardless of how much more expensive your house is the tax rate doesn’t increase.
The original plan of the tax was a fixed rate per person. This among other things is why many people were keen on the idea of digging a hole so deep that we could hand Thatcher over to Satan personally.
That has to be the most regressive tax I’ve heard of in western Europe. Absolutely excessive and I’m sorry it’s happening to you.
Belgium has a home value tax as well, based on fictional rental income + a very convoluted calculation + different % surcharges per council. I find back that it’s on average about 700 to 800 euros per Flemish adult person, but it has large variations. It causes a lot of grumbling, but for most people it’s not considered excessive.
Why have taxes based on income when you can tax accumulated capital instead?
If you try to take too many eggs out of 1 basket, the person carrying that basket is likely to try and run away. So it’s easier and less disruptive to take a few eggs out of lots of different baskets.
Taxing accumulated capital without exceptions is also guaranteed to screw people over. The man in the OP is a good example: he’s a modest man who many years ago bought a modest house for a modest sum of money. Due to circumstances, that house has now increased in value, making him a wealthy man on paper. But he’s deriving no income from that wealth, since he can’t rent it out because he lives in it himself. So now he’s a modest man, who is rich on paper, who is expected to pay high taxes on his paper wealth, turning him into a poor man who is barely scraping by.
Taxing liquid capital is fairly straightforward, especially if it’s tied to income (like company founders owning shares).
Taxing non-liquid assets is complicated because it’s hard to make it fair in cases of family home inheritance and similar situations.
But taxing use of assets as collateral for loans (to create liquidity from a non-liquid asset) should be reasonably fair, it can be treated as an advance on capital gains taxes on the collateralized asset.
My dad literally went to the city and argued against them raising the book value of his home, which would cause him to have to pay more in property tax.
He won too.
That loon.
You certainly can argue about your property taxes and win concessions if you have a good reason. It’s not hard to do. You just need to get off your ass and attend the annual tax assessment meeting.
It’s why that annual meeting exists.
Did he go to city council chambers, or did he just vaguely go into the city itself and start arguing with people?
I would be more okay with property tax, IF once you reached a certain age (or disabled), you were not required to pay property tax.
Yes, we can cover the resulting tax shortfall by increasing the tax on single mothers, first-generation low-income homebuyers, and renters.
Look at the result of California’s tax policy (which was designed with aims similar to yours): an entire generation of young people will never be able to afford a home in the place they grew up in, while millionaire retirees get a huge tax break while making thousands renting out spare rooms in their massive houses on AirBnB.
These kinds of special tax carve outssound nice in theory, because it seems like you are just “not taking money from old and disabled people”, but that tax burden falls on everyone else, as does the massive distortion of the market. You are in fact taking more money from other people, who may be hurting even more.
And don’t tell me, “We’ll fund it by a tax on the rich”. If that’s your proposal, get that tax on the rich passed, and dole out the proceeds to elderly at risk of homelessness. Have it officially be budgeted, so that we can decide if keeping an elderly person in their $2.1m 5 bedroom home is worth cuts elsewhere. As of now, such policies are mostly robbing middle class young people blind.
Solution build excess housing below cost until real estate prices go down.
I’m gonna have to agree with you here.
There’s a better special tax carve out: Don’t require tax for the primary residence. The owner MUST be registered as living at that address. Not a family member. The owner.
Okay if you have family you can have a few more homes, but realistically, if you own 10 or 20 homes, how many people can you REALLY trust to have full ownership of them instead of you? You’re going to have to start paying tax at some point.
at the primary residence up to .25 acres. Anything more than that should be taxed as normal.
.25 acres? Can we up that to at least an acre. I need a place for my chickens to roam and to plant my gardens, and I prefer to have a fire pit with outdoor patio furniture and a grill. Many places an acre is the standard plot size.
Farms & ranches would have to be exempt. There are some cases where it’s legit important to have a large land area.
They dangle the carrot of “home ownership” as if anyone ever owns a home that can be taken away for not paying taxes.
TBH, property taxes could be a necessary evil, like only imposing them above a certain number of owned homes, to curb some companies buying up homes en masse to control the rent market, but I have a weird feeling they might not be the ones paying these taxes.
Lots of countries have property taxes that are more reasonable because they focus on city services like trash pickup and stuff. The problem is property taxes are tied to education in the US and in many states the higher the property taxes the better the schools, the more exclusive the neighborhood, etc.
Agreed with # of homes owned as well as square footage/meters. A mansion should be hit hard by taxes.
I don’t think taxes negate ownership.
If you rent you need permission for every modification, every pet, even for something like planting a garden.
Ownership can be conditional; you can own a domain, but if you don’t pay the renewal fee it can be taken away; you can own a car, but if you drive it without paying your registration it can be impounded; you can own a business, but if you don’t pay your license renewal it can be revoked.
Owning something doesn’t mean it can never be taken away or that you don’t need to do anything to keep it.
your interpretation of the concept of ownership practically renders the word meaningless.
to most people it does in fact mean that it can’t normally be taken away, even though such a thing might be physically or legally possible.
Property taxes also aren’t egregious if you don’t live in an expensive house in an expensive area.
The problem is that most of ya’ll have been conditioned to think “that’s not good enough for you” even when you can’t afford more. Then entitlement kicks in where you think you deserve more before others who have less and before you know it, Bernie loses the nomination and we’re stuck with a trump presidency.
While I do think there should be some relief for some people as far as property taxes are concerned… living in a town or city gives a person access to many local government subsided services. Firefighters, and ambulances are some simple ones that everyone uses. Roads as well. And the cost of that does increase over time. Basing a person’s contributions to paying for that based on the value of thier property is just easier for local governments, and more stable. But it doesn’t really corelate with the use of those services. Nor with income or ability to pay.
Life necessities really shouldn’t be taxed at most levels. Food, shelter, water, heat, medical care. Most already aren’t. But housing still is. Investment properties should be taxed of course, but an average primary residence really shouldn’t be.
Yeah, and property taxes result in more low density housing, as that increases the amount of tax revenue per person. High density housing means less revenue per person but the costs of services per person is still about the same. Sure theoretically, public transit is cheaper per person with high density housing, but realistically it isn’t because nobody gives a shit about public transit in the suburbs.
Of course there’s more costs overall because more suburbs mean governments are pressured to spend insane amounts of money on building and expanding highways. But it’s usually a different level of government that builds the highways, so doesn’t factor in the decisions to create more low density housing.
I’ve read otherwise on the costs of services per person and density. A fire station can only reasonably cover a certain amount of space. So low density housing means you need more fire stations for the same amount of people. And of course you need more road per person in general.
Surely this man would be in favor of a greater and graduated state income tax then, right?
…right?
There are a lot of people suffering right now to the extent that his plight seems so frivolous.
I’ll bet hes a republican voting for deficit which results in raised taxes on people like himself.
i mean, this is less of a property tax issue and more of a social security thing.
Though i am pretty fundamentally against property tax, it’s a physical thing that i can own, i don’t see why i should pay taxes on it. If you want to tax me just hit me with income tax.
Property taxes go towards education. More right-wing bullshit
Interesting. In Texas once you hit 65 they freeze your property taxes and no longer increase it. My parents are only paying $1,800/year on a $250K house. Meanwhile I’m paying $14,000/yr on a $500K house.
Remember - america is not a country, it’s a business.
If you can’t make it - noone gonna do shit
To be fair this dude could have gotten his house 45 years ago for 50K. So adjusting for inflation and overall development of hus, it could make sense. Comparing current payments to cost of money 40 years ago is comparing apples ro oranges.
Now all that being said…there is a serious issue with cost and availability of housing, and I am not dismissing that. I’m just saying context is needed
Is this guy paid by some rich guys wanting to abolish property taxes?
That’s the thing about increasing home prices nobody talks about. It increases the “value” of your home, so you’re taked more.
When my parents retired, they didn’t move out to the country to get away from the city life. They did it because it saved them 40 grand a year in property taxes.
Here in the United States, this issue and this sign are advocating for what? This man is where? At his county commissioner meeting? This sign implies we want the federal government in our local tax policy? I mean really? GTFO with this garbage. Stay the F out of my busniess, if I don’t like property tax, that comes with my local vote, and has nothing to do with the federal government. I could bet someone paid this tool to stand with this sign because someone who doesn’t understand decentralized local government power wants to make a point about something that has nothing to do with social security.
How big is his house? How much is it worth now?
How much did he pay for the land it sits on? Or did he inherit that?
Who does he think maintains road networks and all the other infrastructure he relies on?
I see both arguments for this as valid. I get that you wanna stay and live your entire life in the place you owned forever. The reality is taxes are needed and will increase forever, which are important to keeping your state functioning (as long as the people in charge are doing a good job and actually using the funds wisely). I wonder what state they are from because I know property tax can be wildly different depending upon that. I’m sure they don’t want to, but there are like 6 states that currently offer no property tax to seniors over 65 and 10 that offer exemptions based on income and age. At the same time it is good to see them complain because maybe they can try to sway the state to also offer the no property tax benefit to seniors as well. Still if he is hurting that much, then it’s probably easier to sell the place and move to another place that will allow him to be better off with less worrying. It’s a valid option even if he doesn’t agree with it.
Here the increases are capped at 3% per year if you live in the house. I lived in a shitty house we bought for 35k in the 1990s crash, and property taxes when we sold it in the breakup 20 years later were still under 1k a year, though insurance was crazy high. With husband we had to buy a much more expensive house, there are no shitty ones for sale anymore, all are snatched by corps to flip and rent. So now it’s high but in 20 years maybe it will seem low again. Especially if the market crashes and it’s re-assessed more reasonably.
It’s just inflation, I do think someone owning a home costs the city in roads, trash, transit, other services, Is not crazy to tax on property ownership.
California disagrees: …wikipedia.org/…/1978_California_Proposition_13
Property tax is assessed when there’s a sale, and otherwise changes very slowly. It’s a controversial measure.
Sorry, oh the irony is rich.
I don’t know his situation but I think primary residence up to certain value shouldn’t be taxed at all. There’s a huge difference between an old man living alone in a house he had built for his family 60 years ago and an “investor” who owns entire neighbourhoods.
I was wondering if the US is property taxes were like 33%/year but it said original value, so I’m guessing it was dirt cheap then
Cocopanda@futurology.today 17 hours ago
People that complain about taxes. I’ll agree you don’t pay taxes. But you don’t use any roads to travel. Ever again.
TheTurner@lemm.ee 15 hours ago
I work with one of those people. He’s a dipshit. He thinks time is controlled by satellites and clouds are made by cloud machines. Also, the earth is flat and no one has left it because of the dome.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Mine him for Sci-fi stories.
m4xie@lemmy.ca 13 hours ago
Or fire services.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 16 hours ago
That’s the only issue with the opt-in taxes idea. But seriously, why should the rest of us be punished because they don’t want taxes? Just have the destructive people who say taxation is theft, well…live with no government services, 100% dependent on corporations. Taxes should be opt-in. And that means, those who opt out will have no medical service, no public sewage system, no disability or welfare. We can let them have the roads as gratis, just to keep the peace. They will quickly realize how stupid and evil their system really is, when they are the only ones suffering from it.
gabbath@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
This sounds nice but in practice will backfire. You need the systems to be universal, so that everyone, including the richest, have a stake in wanting to see them improved. Otherwise you’ll get a two tiered system where the public versions are trash because they’re underfunded and the private versions (what the rich use) are great but also expensive af.
You want things to work like insurance, where everyone pays in but only the people who need them use it. I want Musk to pay a fuckton into Social Security, not nothing at all because he doesn’t use it. Even now there’s a problem with Social Security in particular because, even though everyone has to pay it, it puts a cap/limit on how much you pay, so Musk currently ends up paying his share in the first day of the year, and his contribution amounts to the same as a teacher or something.
Universal programs with progressive taxation, that’s the way. Low taxes at the bottom, high taxes at the top.
PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Corporations are staffed by people who went to public schools.