On Monday, August 11, 2014 8:22:15 PM UTC-4, sms wrote:
On 8/11/2014 12:39 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:

trader_4 writes:



Assessed value at the time of purchase, which is the amount of purchase.







That's pretty screwed up then and unfair. Somebody that bought a house

20 years ago that's now worth 1 mil, is still paying taxes based on a purchase

price that has nothing to do with reality. The other guy comes along

and buys a new 1mil house and he pays 1/3, 1/2 the taxes? How is that fair?



It was voted for by the people. Democracy in action. Ask any

republican - if the people vote for it, it must be done that way

(regardless of whether its a good idea, or even a violation of the

federal constitution)



(The justifcation was to allow retired folks to keep their homes).



That was how it was pushed through anyway. The big beneficiaries are

actually commercial property owners.



2% per year increase in taxes is sufficient for owner occupied

properties. It should not apply to rental properties or non-owner

occupied commercial properties.



If you buy a house for $500K and 15 years later it's worth $1.5 million,

why should your tax rate triple?



Because the tax burden should be shared equally? That you should
not put an unfair load on people who buy houses today, while giving
a reduced load to others, regardless of income, how wealthy they are,
etc.




Of course there are unintended consequences of such a law. People buying

a new house might keep their old house and rent it out because they have

a tax incentive to do this. The taxes paid to the state and county don't

cover the services that the renters use but the landlord realizes a lot

of income.

Bingo. I can see lots of other unintended consequences. For example,
if one had a 500 acre estate that you intended to keep in the family,
you could have put it into a trust to hold, freezing it's taxes at
an unfair low rate forever, no? The middle income tax payer down the street
who bought 2 years ago, he's screwed.

Or as I pointed out, how about some elderly person who wants to sell
their current house and move close to their kids in CA? They could
be 85 and in poor health, but if they essentially want to swap one
house for another, they are screwed too. Anytime you govt imposes
totally artificial constraints on the free markets, it usually has
adverse effects. It's also clear CA hasn't been raising enough in tax
revenue, so it's been piling up debt to horrific levels and at least
3 municipalities have gone bankrupt. That's a sign that something is
seriously wrong.