Reply #27: If corporations paid a reasonable property tax, individuals' property tax

[AP]

would probably gone down by 2/3rd.

There should be an alternative minimum property tax (and income tax) for corporations.

If your property values are increasing becuase of upkeep, and that allows you to borrow more against it, which gives you economic power, I'm not sure it's unreasonable to tap into that wealth just a tiny little bit with a tax.

When you don't tax a way to get money, you find that everyone who has control over their economic power is able to take advantage of that loophole.

If there were NO property tax, and you could make improvements galore to property and then borrow against that value and never have any of that wealth subject to a progressive tax, you're going to find an imense amount of wealth changing hands that way, and it will be the super wealthy who benefit from it, and not working class people.

Obviously, if at the bottom of the scale, working class people can't afford to fix up their property for fear of increased property tax valuations, the problem isn't with the fact that there is a property tax. The problem is where it's set at. No tax should create a disincentive to work and improvement and investment.

Here's a parallel. Often a small business will not take on additional business because it just isn't worth the added effort after taxes. A larger company which pays tax at the same or lower rate, but can afford to take on the extra business will do so. The problem is not that we have income tax on corporate income. The problem is that it isn't sufficiently progressive. Getting rid of corporate income tax isn't the answer. Setting it properly so that nobody turns down work BECAUSE of the the tax code is the answer.

If there were no tax on property. Rich people would accumulate a ton of property. Furthermore, there'd be no reason to use it. Property tax encourages people to generate income from their land. Getting rid of property tax would encourage hoarding, which would just make the remaining land (which regular people need just to live, if not work) even more expensive. (Incidentally, this is another reason it's important to tax business property even more than residential-only property, which is not happening today at all).