Reply #47: Which is why we need to replace property taxes with income taxes [View All]

[question everything]

I had a thread about it last summer. Basically we started with property tax because it was safe to know that property owners had the means to pay tax to support local government.

But as the voters in California saw in 1978, with Proposition 13, and now everyone sees everyplace, market value of houses rises faster than most people's income.

I think that it would make more sense for a city to find out the income of its residents, say, $5 million. And let's say that the city requires $3 million for operations. The state then can levy extra tax on each of the people living in that city. This way, the tax is progressive. Or, as a hybrid, the city can still keep a base level of property tax that, as with Prop. 13 in California, limits the percentage that the tax can rise each year.