True Crime: Property Taxes

From Jeff Childers C&C News, March 20, 2025

Comments by RCC: Every time I get a new, increased assessment on our family home, I contest it with the local board, pointing out the injustice of threatening to put retired people on fixed incomes out of their homes because of “inflation.”

The assessment board usually backs off a little, but my taxes still go up steadily. They also provide a list of “comps” that supposedly show the value of recent properly sales, but for some reason the sales of lower-cost homes are not included.

So last time I complained to our local town government (not the ones who conduct the appraisals), and got a call back from the mayor himself. I told him that if he couldn’t control the amount of the home appraisals, he could lower the town’s percentage tax rate on the amount. He said nothing.

I then told him that local governments LOVED inflation because it always meant a windfall for them. He then became irate. “Of course we don’t love inflation!” he screamed into the phone.

Meanwhile, we now have a fancy new pavilion in our town park with solar panels, a good-sized patch of land, and, of course, a users fee. We have never seen ANYONE use the new pavilion and rarely does anyone use the ones that are already there. And on it goes.

So I was glad to see the following write-up today from Jeff Childers on his C&C News website. Believe me it drew a lot of comments!

Jeff Childers Coffee & Covid, March 20, 2025

Were this any other year, I’d have ignored this slow-burning story. But 2025 is becoming a year where anything seems possible, and the story keeps cropping back up. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran its latest article under the headline, “Florida Explores Ditching Property Tax as Home Prices Soar.”

The Journal reported that Florida lawmakers have filed dozens of bills, from proposals to end property taxes altogether to less ambitious tweaks that would provide at least some welcome relief to Sunshine State homeowners. The underlying problem, like during any inflationary period, is that wages (the ‘price’ of labor) haven’t kept up with the prices of everything else.

So, as estimated home prices soared, local governments eagerly amped up their tax appraisals, and now their bloated budgets are fatter than deer ticks. Florida cities are swimming in tax receipts and, predictably, they are funding every kind of lunatic social program you can think of.

The deplorable result is that, for many Floridians, their property taxes are starting to compete with their mortgage payments. It’s hitting everyone. Some clients with beachfront properties, for example, now pay annual property taxes in six figures, for unremarkable homes built over 50 years ago.

Enter Governor DeSantis. The world’s best Governor took up the cause last year. He’s been relentlessly calling for a constitutional amendment to nix property tax. Now several states, including Wyoming, Kansas and Montana, are currently considering significant property-tax bills.

But it’s not clear all voters think would be is a good idea. In November, North Dakota voters crushed a ballot measure that would have eliminated their property taxes.

Of course, North Dakotan property taxes are nowhere near as bad as Florida’s. You Dakotans haven’t felt the pain yet. The Journal reported that, in Florida, property tax receipts have doubled over the last ten years. Which means we are now paying twice as much, and I can assure you, it feels that way.

The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits taking private property for public use without just compensation. But courts covered for local governments by playing semantic games, deeming property taxes a “tax” and not a “taking.” Now, local governments can confiscate people’s property in slow motion, by degrees and increments, in a long series of razor cuts, through perpetual property taxation— free from legal consequences of calling the process a “taking.”

Think about it this way. If the government outright seized 1% of your home each year and sold that partial interest to Blackrock, that would clearly be an unconstitutional taking. Whereas if they just demand 1% of the property value in cash every year, but seize the entire thing if you can’t pay, the courts say well, that is completely different.

If it did happen, what would be a better way for local governments to pay for services? Well, how about a sales tax on property sales? I know that sounds horrible, but if you only had to pay once, instead of forever, it might be worth it. And even though the tax would prominently appear in annoying bold typeface at the bottom of every sales contract, you probably wouldn’t even really pay for it, since sellers would have to adjust property prices downwards to accommodate the built-in cost of the tax.

In that sense, both buyers and sellers would share in the initial tax burden, and people would actually own their homes instead of renting them from the county commission.

Anyway, I’m a lawyer, not a tax expert. A sales tax is just one idea. But ending property taxes would restore true property ownership, free us from being de facto tenants of the government, encourage local governments to run efficiently instead of sitting back and leeching off property owners, and the sales tax idea would make local taxation far more transparent and honest.

It’s already a totally bonkers year, let’s just go for it and end property taxes once and for all. Who’s with me?

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