Guest Post by Eric Peters
Property taxes make it hard to own property. Impossible, actually – which is exactly the point of property taxes.
They aren’t merely a means of mulcting us, as other taxes (such as the income tax) are. Property taxes are the means of assuring that we never truly own anything by making us pay for the thing in perpetuity.
The true owners of the thing in question being those who collect this rent in perpetuity.
But don’t take my word for it. Read about it. In The Communist Manifesto. Here.
You can stop paying income taxes and not go to prison. Just stop earning income. But you can’t stop paying property taxes – without being homeless, at any rate – and so are forced to continue earning income in order to pay both income and property taxes. In order to keep you working, you see. So that you are never at ease; never secure.
Property taxes are also enormously regressive – ironic, given their “progressive” genesis.
I just received the annual property tax bill for my 16-year-old truck. Another $100 must be sent to its true owners. This may not seem especially onerous until you consider that it’s $100 every year, ongoing – and was more when the truck was newer, the tax being based on its retail value.
At one point, it was several hundred dollars each year.
It’s “only” $100 now – because the retail value of my truck has declined to about $3,000 (according to the mulcters and true owners of my vehicle, who decree its value as well as how much they’re going to mulct me for).
But, consider (and leave aside for the moment the moral obnoxiousness, as such, of perpetual taxes on property) … that $100 times ten – encompassing the past ten years of mulcting. I am deliberately low-balling the total amount mulcted, in order to strengthen my objection and increase the outrage I am hoping to conjure.
Okay.
$100 every year for ten years is $1,000; my truck is now worth about $3,000. I have paid one-third the current retail value of my truck in taxes – in return for the privilege of not having government thugs come to my house (which they also own, even though I paid the mortgage off years ago) and take possession of it.
Put another way, I am taxed at about the same rate on my 16-year-old truck as someone in the highest income tax bracket is taxed on their income. It doesn’t get much more regressive than that – unless you want to talk about the regressive taxes applied to motor fuels, which are more than a third of the cost of each gallon of fuel.
Note the pattern.
And keep in mind that the mulcting never stops – even as the value of the vehicle drops. If I own the truck long enough, they will have fleeced me of half its value, probably.
Taxes this extortionate are more than merely taxes. They are tools. Negative incentives. Designed to make owning things burdensome by making it onerously expensive.
Perpetually.
These taxes – along with mulcting by the insurance mafia – tamp down interest in owning vehicles, especially multiple vehicles.
The funds ripped from my hide as punishment for owning an old truck (well, attempting to maintain the fiction of ownership) and a house, too, no doubt prompt old Karl to smile – wherever his loathsome bones are mouldering. One thousand bucks – lowballed – on the truck, so far.
Plus almost $30,000 on the house, so far.
Over say 30 years, it will amount to nearly $100,000 – and that’s assuming the “landlord” does not raise the “rent” over the next couple of decades … which is as likely as a baby brontosaurus showing up on my porch looking for some grub.
And what I pay in “rent” on my paid-for house – about $1,800 annually for the privilege of being allowed to occupy the home I paid for but which the government in fact owns – is a pittance compared with what many others pay. My sister, for instance. She lives (god help her) in California and so pays in excess of $10,000 every year to the state in order to avoid the government sending armed thugs to evict her from their property.
But for me, it’s only $31,000.
I sometimes think about what I might have done with that money. Assuming a very modest 5 percent return – if I had the money rather than the government – I would now have almost $50,000.
I could easily live on $50,000 for the next several years. Or set aside the money in a just-in-case fund for any health issues that come up.
Or – hell – get my Trans-Am repainted.
Instead, I pay the government, the true owner of all my things.
And yours, too.
This is why many/most old people cannot live in their paid off home and/or have to move to cheaper places to retire.
I’ve been stating these facts to people for many years now, and most of the time I get the feeling that they think I’m some sort of wide-eyed radical. Property taxes are the most oppressive tool in the government arsenal. I pay my annual property taxes “under protest” and am continually asked if I would like to meet with the county appraiser to discuss why I add that condition to my payment. I always respond that it would be like a homeowner negotiating with a burglar as to what he would steal, since the state has the power (but not the right) to send men with guns to remove me if I do not pay.
Thanks, Mr. Peters, for stating accurately and succinctly what I and other believers in the Constitution know to be our right; to own property without the fear of seizure by an out of control and criminal government. Your articles are always enlightening.
The day is approaching………
Great post!!!!
Personally, I find payroll taxes even worse, but it is arguable. Payroll taxes directly tax someone who provides work to others. It defines insane, to tax someone for creating jobs.
How does someone who has a job and is on a payroll create jobs?
Jesus Karrl. Try to keep up: https://www.payrolltax.gov.au/
Absolutely. The reason the government can get away with a direct tax on wages is that the government makes the companies that hire people the tax collector. And companies willingly collect these taxes for the government at there own expense. How much taxes do you think the government would get from the working man if he were responsible for paying his own tax? There would be a tax revolt.
If companies refused to be the tax collector the government would have to back down.
I learned a new word today: https://www.wordnik.com/words/mulct
Right on. Property taxes and payroll taxes should both be illegal. One is theft of your property, the other is theft of your labor.
But look at the wonderful society the minions of government have given us for the continuous confescation of a huge percentage of any thing and everything we hope to or thought we own .
Endless wars , devalued dollars , bankrupted pensions , stagnant wage growth , sky rocketing health care costs and of course those who aided and enabled government get bailed out and we get a tarp from harbor freight with a coupon and a purchase .
What are we going to do about any of this : NOTHING !
We should kill it but we can’t the badge wearing minions are addicted to parasitically surviving off our earned wealth and will come at us in full force should we protest refuse or resist .
You know refusing to assist and cooperate with government theft of your wealth is a crime punishable by taking more wealth and the illusion of freedom you think you have now . It’s all gone now and it’s only a matter of time before the lid blows off sky high ! Then what ???
FORGET ME NOT
Boat guy,then what?!Tis easy when you think about it,to quote a great saying,”Payback tis a bitch!”
I think you should move to the Congo, where , since the Belgians left, no one has built a road or repaired one. You would not be bothered with auto taxes or fuel taxes.
You could happily drive through the mud or jungle.
Oh, you mean that country that the US government literally paid Mobutu Sese Seko for 30 years to rape dry? He didn’t need to put on the property taxes charade, he just took what he wanted, at the point of a gun.
Here in the USA, we still need a bit of ceremony to dress up the theft.
I battled with the LA County tax department for years regarding a cruising sailboat that I built over a period of years from a hull and deck . I registered the boat once it was movable but unfinished to secure a spot in the new Long Beach marina. Thats when the troubles began. They wanted me to pay tax on the list price of a new boat which was valued at $120k but I was still working on it four years later and argued that it was not worth that and produced receipts for the hull and deck, engine etc for around $24k. I was able to get away with that for a few of years until someone showed up to look at the boat and then the tax jumped substantially to about $1100 a year or 1% of book value. I argued that it was not fair to make me pay that rate as I did not have that much money in the boat and built it myself having about 3000 hours of my time in the project. He “reasoned” that I could not count my time as an expense to reduce my tax bill but it did have a value which increased the taxable amount which I had to pay. WTF!
Anyway, the years passed and finally I was ready to go cruising and left California before the new tax year started. I sent a letter to the tax department including a photocopy of my passport and yacht entry papers into Mexico and indicated that I no longer work, have no property or bank accounts or any ties whatsoever with California and I had no plans to return.
About 6 months later I received a tax bill and lien in my mail package! I called the tax department and said I was in Mexico and had no plans to return to California and didn’t owe the tax. His reply was “You people think you can just get on your boat and sail away and not owe us the tax. Unless you produce a document showing that you are paying tax on your boat somewhere else you still owe us”. I replied “Fuck you! Its because of assholes like you that I don’t live in California anymore and I’m not paying and you can’t do anything about it!” I continued cruising and a year later I got a new title for my boat in Florida with no problems and a year after that did the same in the US Virgin Islands. I eventually got the vessel documented which made it a US instead of state vessel.
Several years later when visiting my parents in California a letter just happened to arrive from the tax department. It was the removal of an invalid lien on my boat. I guess they gave up and needed to clear the books.
Florida has a Property Tax Cap as long as you own the property except the Schools are exempt. The Gov’t SOBs need restraint or they’d rob Taxpayers blind to give it to the FSA, and still let the Infrastructure go to Hell. The worthless government Schools should not be exempt but the parents paying for private educations should be exempt. Yes, the taxpayers in the pressure cooker will someday explode because there are to many politicians who serve the bums.
Folks can laugh at Argentina, call it a 3rd world hole, and it isn’t perfect, far from it, but… But here, if your home/real property is your primary residence, it CANNOT be seized for non-payment of taxes. A lien can be placed on it and it can’t be sold until the tax obligation is discharged, but if it stays in the family upon owner’s death, it can’t be seized in that case either, and so on down through the generations.
An “officially retired” owner becomes exempt from provincial and municipal property taxes upon proving that no debt is owed.
A vehicle ceases to be taxable after 11 years of title-issuance.
Yes, we have many other taxes that are far too high, but at least here you truly can own your home and vehicle and so can your heirs.
I was having a pleasant morning until you reminded me of this. I would rise up, but know that there would be no one backing me up. Dammit.
” If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around(these banks) will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
Thomas Jefferson
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/11/06/thomas-jefferson-warned-the-nation-about-the-power-of-the-banks/#2716075f2b18
It seems that municipalities beat the bankers to the punch, in many cases. A few years ago, my ex and I got behind on our taxes. 24 HOURS AFTER the 1 year mark, the Sheriff served us with papers, notifying us of a tax levy that gave us 60 days to pay or to vacate the property. After that, they would forcefully evict. We had sorted out our financial difficulties and were about to pay them anyway, for two years (1800 BUCKS IN TOTAL), but I never have gotten over the SWIFTNESS OF THEIR “JUSTICE”, that they deemed it RIGHT to perform a tax foreclosure over 900 dollars blows my mind. Off and on ever since, I have tried to research this topic but have yet to find a reliable source that explains EXACTLY when property taxes became an enslavement “thing”; some sources claim it goes back to the beginning of the nation but, given the libertarian bent of the founders, I doubt that to be true; after all, what is the point of being secure in your papers on your property when you have no guarantee of security in said property? Anyway, I will keep looking . . . .