The words “Housing Crisis” have achieved epidemic status next to “overdose deaths,” “Bird Flu,” and if you are one for reminiscing, everything about the COVID thing. It is a topic with a polarizing quality whose solutions I have inferred might not be so good for New Hampshire.
A less frequently cited problem in housing “issues” is property taxes. Mine have more than doubled since I moved to where I live (I have been here almost 25 years), and the “services are not twice as good or even better. The tax exceeds my actual principal and interest payments and has for years. By the time I pay off the house, my total bill for taxes will have likely doubled again. Most of that will pay for unnecessary administrative overhead at pricey daycare centers doing business as public schools when you could probably learn more at an actual daycare at a fraction of the cost.
If you want to lower property taxes get rid of the school administrative units (we have SAU’s in NH) and have principles report to the local School board. If they need an additional secretary, add them, but ditching SAUs would likely shave millions off operating costs, after which you could address the question of what these daycare centers ought to be doing and why they do so much.
I’m listing a bit, so let me get back on track.
If you’d like to shake the foundations of how New Hampshire pays for things, you should read this article reposted at ZeroHedge. The Headline is “Why Property Tax Is Illegal.” Here are a few snippets for your consideration.
One can argue the 16th Amendment going back to 1913 and we are prepared to do so. The quantified evidence that we have assembled over several years of lawsuits points to exactly why the law as originally written prohibits taxation on unrealized gains. “Market value” as created by the States from which an Assessed Taxable Value is denoted, is in fact an unrealized gain.
The Biden/Harris cabal got a good talking to over the subject of addressing debt by taxing unrealized gains. It’s a sinister and draconian act of tyranny that, as it turns out, is the foundation for funding the local and county governments in the Granite State. Not the tax so much as the use of assessed values and tweaks to the rates per thousand to raise however much money “they” need or want to spend.
The article cites numerous reasons for the perfidy, which I will not duplicate here, but they are worth a look.
If property valuation were true, requiring a willing buyer and willing seller neither under duress, and cash settled, then the maximum value assigned could only be what the house was built for or what the house was purchased for, until such time as the house is sold.
In other words, you should not be taxed at a value other than what was last paid for the property and its improvements, and it would remain that way until it is sold again, at which point that would be the assessed value. That could work, but it would not lower property taxes. The Town would just crank up the tax rate per thousand until it arrived at the same sum of collections to appease its addictions.
The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not provide for, nor state, that all land is owned by the Federal Government. In fact, the war of 1812 was fought to prohibit this exact action. Real Estate Property Owners have been relegated to paying rent on the dirt below their asset, and yet there is no agreed to ground lease with any State government as the Lessor and a property owner as the Lessee. Can anyone show you or me where the Taxing Entities are the ground Lessor in any Taxing County in the United States such as the Lands of His Majesty King Kamehameha III in Hawaii which date back to 1848? NO!
It is oft said and argued that you do not own anything. You rent it, and if you stop paying the rent, people with guns will come and take your stuff. All of it. This is not in dispute. Tax policy is used to create and protect gentrified neighborhoods. Still, in most cases, it is simply ham-handed indifference that aggravates homelessness or, in modern parlance, the housing crisis. This leads us to my earlier statement about shaking foundations, at least in my state.
We have quantified that roughly 72% of the single-family homeowners cannot afford what the Central Appraisal Districts claim as the median value of a home which proves the fraud on its face. The system has become so irretrievably corrupt, that the only solution is the elimination of property taxes in favor of a Uniform States Sales Tax.
I have argued that New Hampshire’s current scheme helps keep the government smaller and less costly, which does not translate to public schools, which are the source of tax-driven homelessness in New Hampshire. On average, 70% of your bill is for a failed educational experiment. Exceptional districts manage to get 40-50% of “students” proficient in grade-level math or reading, and you don’t get a 50-60% rebate. Perhaps you should.
I’d be more inclined toward a flat income tax, but I think the property tax scheme can still work based on the last purchase price valuation. But if you don’t do something about the gold-digging schools that can’t even teach kids to read or add, you’ll never solve the problem. The other tax will be as high as it needs to feed those bottomless pits. You won’t lose your house, but you still won’t be able to afford to live there.
And if you let Democrats have control, they’ll add new taxes on top of the ones you can’t afford.
The problem is, as always, not how we are taxed but spending, even if property taxes are illegal.
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