09-28-2016, 06:53 AM
quote:
Originally posted by terracore
I'm not condoning what this person did but maybe the motivation was to hand it to the county and let them sort it out rather than continuing to subsidize his neighbor's property tax. If they need financial assistance there are avenues for that. Purposely withholding property tax by circumventing the procedures that assess it is called tax evasion.
I've never heard of anybody appealing their land-only property tax bill by showing up and saying in all fairness the county needs to levy additional taxes on them to account for the value of their unpermitted dwellings. There are two issues at play here, one is building codes and the other is taxes.
We'll never know if this person is upset because somebody is taking a dump on the ground rather than into a hole in the ground, or if its because their unpermitted neighbor is driving a Mercedes. Some people live the unpermitted nightmare, others are living the unpermitted dream.
There is a simple solution to this sort of conflict, and that's to stop taxing improvements entirely and shift all the "tax" onto land.
There are myriad other -- huge, civilization-changing -- benefits to land value taxation (LVT) as well, but that's Land Economics 102, which I offer only via email.
