Talk:Property tax

paying Taxes without money

Say someone wants to withdraw themselves from the civil economy of the United States (or any other country), how do they pay taxes, income (assuming you can define their subsistance such as hunting and gathering as income) taxes and property taxes. My point is how can someone pay taxes without money. The article does not address in what way or which medium is necesary to the payment of taxes to the state, and the posibilities of becomeing exempt. For instance what would you have to do to be perfectly exempt? Own nothing and live nowhere? In which case you would starve. You have to have land to grow food to feed your family but as long as you don't sell any of it, do you have to be taxed? If you have no money then how do you pay the taxes on your property? If you don't pay you get your land posesed, right? Then you starve. So you are basicaly forced into buisiness. Right? So this is an excelent example of how you do not really own the land. You rent it from the government and if you don't make the appropriet improvments, they will give it to someone who will.

Just asking?

• That property ownership is subject to certain conditions imposed by government does not mean that the owner is merely renting from the government. In the same way that one cannot walk down the street without subjecting himself to the powers of the police, one cannot own property unconditionally, at least not in an industrialized nation. And just as you wouldn't say that you are merely borrowing from the government your freedom to walk the street, neither is it correct to say that you are merely renting your property from the government.--Leftymn 00:10, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Property Tax is Rent to the State

Under any system of property tax the "owner" is deemed to be the State and the entity in possession of the property merely the renter thereof.

PCE 01:44, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

How is this statement true? What does it even mean? In my experience property is assessed to the owner, who is most certainly not the state.--67.137.235.187 04:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

A recent, anonymous, editor removed an external reference on the grounds that it was "an insipid article by a pro-tax individual". I haven't immediately restored it, because being insipid would be good grounds for removing it (and I don't know the literature well enough to tell whether that charge is true); it is also somewhat out of date (originally published 1972). But being pro-tax would not be grounds for removing it; we ought to have a balance of pro- and anti- references. So far as I can tell it was the only reference we had that discussed the distributional effect of property tax. Does anyone know a better reference for this issue - ideally a balanced and/or review paper? If not, then I think the deleted reference should go back. seglea 5 July 2005 23:15 (UTC)

council tax

Any tax on the possession or ownership of property is a type of property tax.

Renters are owners of an interest in a piece of property. Their ownership is limited by time though.

UK council tax

Does Council Tax count as a property tax? It replaced the poll tax and you pay more the more your property is worth. Secretlondon 23:22, Nov 20, 2003 (UTC)

Interesting point. But I don't think it can be a property tax, because you pay it whether you own the property or not. It is really a kind of poll tax (but couldn't be called one for political reasons, of course). The fact that it charges you more for living in a bigger house can be seen as an attempt to be a progressive tax, on the assumption that size/value of house will be correlated with income. seglea 01:26, 21 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The tax is (a) per (private) property, not per person; (b) paid by the owner of the property if the property is unoccupied, although it's paid by the occupant if it is. I would argue that (a) here makes it a property tax rather than anything else; who pays it seems less relevant to me, and the payee still has an attachment to the property either way round.

UK business rates may also count as a property tax, but I'm not up on the details.

The UK's council tax system is ad valorem of a form. From memory - this needs verification and a reference - the UK bands houses by value into bands A-G, where the bands are delimited by the property value as assessed at a certain point in time (1980?) and compared against thresholds. Property improvement (il.e. new building) can affect the banding, I assume they go with notional value.

The rate of tax is modified, with discounts on single occupancy, occupancy entirely by unemployed people or students, no occupancy.

Thus it is a function of property value, but not solely of property value, and the relationship is by no means linear.

Because the selected point in time was one of high property value, the low bands are relatively underpopulated in expensive parts of the country, reducing the distinction between the tax on the average and most expensive properties in those areas.

Anyway, I came to this article looking for something else, and I don't know enough to fill the section in, but I'm hoping that it will be considered for inclusion.

Removed text

Local municipalities have increasingly required minimum lot sizes to limit the supply of housing. This forces up the housing prices in an area, keeping poorer people out. Part of the reasoning behind this is that poorer people tend to use more government services.

Where is this supposedly happening? This sounds like someone's political gripe. Some references and some context would be useful if anyone thinks it should be included in the article. -- Beland 16:11, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

New Orleans case study

I removed the claim that New Orleans was the second-largest city in the U.S. before the Civil War. In 1860, New York, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, and Baltimore were all larger. In 1850, the position of New Orleans was the same except it was bigger than Brooklyn. [1] [2] This brings into question the accuracy of the rest of the New Orleans case study. -- Beland 16:46, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

States And Countries With No Property Tax

What countries have no property tax? And what states within federations have no property tax? Zachorious 00:42, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there really no place on the face of this planet where you can actually own real estate? As opposed to just renting it from the local government? Seems a bit unfair that you can't just live on your land without earning money to pay some big strong guy that supposedly knows better than you to let you be. I have done my share of web searching but cannot find ANY place whatsoever with no property taxes.

Now, I understand that municipalities generally rely upon property tax, the most reliable of all taxes (it's pretty hard to hide your property) to fund police and emergency services and other "necessary" functions of gov't, but why can't one sign an agreement to forfeit these services in return for less or no property tax, effectively becoming a small self-contained, self policed country with a controlled border? I don't have AS much of a problem with income, sales taxes etc., but forcing people to either contribute to the economy or lose their property equals slavery, IMHO. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.57.36.67 (talk) 06:12, 9 October 2007 (UTC)