Reply #46: property taxes are not want prevent minimum wage earners

[salin]

or those earning just a bit more than minimum wage from buying homes. Down payments are the first of many hurdles.

But these are the very folks whose inoomes would be most severely hit by doubling the sales tax to 13.5%. Unless one assumes that the poor only purchase food and medicine...

I left a very expensive housing market for the choice to be closer to family, and to be able to someday (which is now a few years ago) be able to buy a home. Not everyone has the option of mobility - but for those that do, there are areas where the values of home are more reasonable, and thus the taxes reflect that.

I work with so many families that earn so very little, that it is frustrating when folks completely ignore what the real cost for thsoe living on the working-poor level. This would push many folks from the near poverty level, to under the poverty level.

For those of us who earn more than 5 or 7 dollars an hour to underestimate the direct impact upon those living on such meager wages of such a high sales tax, suggests that our own egocentrism has trumped compassion/empathy. I don't *love* paying my property taxes - but I bought within my affordability range and it is a price that I pay for being a home owner instead of a renter. But while the increase in sales tax would take a bite out of my budget, at this point in life (not true in earlier parts of my professional life) I can absorb it. But I work with many folks who could not.

I worked with folks who when gas prices rose to $3 a gallon started making serious choices not only about short drives to the store (not a bad thing, restricting driving), but tradeoffs in cutting other necessary expenditures in order to pay to get to and from work.

Just my two cents.