Letters to the Editor
Property Taxation is Obsolete!
By Jack Beilman
Apr 24, 2006, 18:44

When asked why he robbed banks, the famous bank robber, Willie Sutton, replied, “Because that’s where the money is!”

All branches of government need money to support their operation. Federal and State governments go “where the money is” – income! However, local governments do not go where the money is - the fairest, easiest, most direct source of tax revenue.

Instead they go through an inexact, illogical, laborious and arguable process whereby an expensive and unwieldy bureaucracy of fallible and mistake-prone “assessors” express their opinions as to the conversion rate of real property to money.

This year New Yorkers pay $63,132,200.00 to support the Office of Real Property Services. The total additional cost of assessor’s offices in hundreds of towns must be many times $63 million! However, the cost of these thousands of government employees is not the primary concern. The primary concern is fairness.

There is no longer the same correlation between a person’s home and his financial status that existed in years long past when governments began taxing real property. Before there was an income tax, property ownership was the most obvious and reasonable measure of a citizen’s wealth and means to support his government.

Today a person’s home may be a reasonable measure of his income when he is in the prime years of his working career. That changes drastically after retirement and the combined effect of a fixed income and inflation. The home no longer represents ability to meet a tax obligation based on an assessor’s opinion of its’ market value - which may be multiples above the owner’s original cost. At the same time the owner’s purchasing power of his fixed income is reduced by the same inflation. Clearly this process is Unfair!

With today’s information technology and readily available databases it would be relatively easy to base all taxes on income. Why should the value of one’s property be based on an assessor’s opinion? It does not cost the government any more to service a million dollar home than a 50 thousand dollar home.

The necessary income data already exists in the files of the IRS. For any taxing jurisdiction, say a town, the total income for all entities (individuals, retail, commercial, industrial, etc.) provides the tax base (equivalent to the current total taxable property base). Each one’s tax is then the ratio of one’s income divided by the total income times the budget. Computing tax bills will be much simpler. No one can manipulate the "tax rate” for political purposes

What would be eliminated:

* The costs of all of the assessors, their offices and staffs throughout New York State; all or most of the State ORPS bureaucracy.

* The injustices, abuses and mistakes related to opinions of property values, the turmoil of community-wide property re-valuations with challenges, grievance days, hours spent by worried citizens fighting for their economic existence.

* The anxiety due to strangers photographing and inspecting one’s home.

* The “STAR” Program.

* Deceptive manipulation of the “tax rate”

It is predictable that the establishment will vigorously oppose any change such as suggested here, even though the change would help reduce the taxes in the highest taxed State in the United States. Moreover fairness would be far better served if a citizen’s tax burden were to be based on a relevant and exact number (income) instead of on a bureaucrat’s opinion (market value).

Jack Beilman
Lancaster NY









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