Reply #43: They didn't work the land where they were, because they didn't own it.

[AP]

The west was where you could get cheap land.

They weren't escaping property tax. They were finding property.

If you have a lot of land, and you can't pay property tax, the problems is one or both fo the following: you suck as an entrepreneur (and you should sell the land to someone who can do better with it), and/or property tax is disproportionately burdening you and there needs to be a more fair allocation.

The solution isn't to get rid of all property tax, which will simply benefit people who hold lots of land, don't sell it, and don't do much with it.

Incidentally, if you produce goods on your land which you sell to a retailer, rather than the general public, you wouldn't collect any sales tax on those sales, and if you operate as a corporation, you might end up paying super low income taxes on your income from the land -- eg, you're passing your income off as dividend income taxed at 15% and you're paying effective tax rates of about 2-4%.

So you really have to ask yourself if you want to totally eliminate property taxes for people who make money off the land (granted they don't pay much now -- but that's the problem!).

Kevin Phillips argues that the problem with property tax is that corporations generally pay none. When a community raises property tax it disproportionately falls on individuals' residential property.

To fix it, you have to make sure the business property owners pay their fair share. Communties should pass laws that restrict the sort of tax breaks their communities can grant. And I'm not talking about BS like propostion 13 which allows corporations to pay property tax at 1970s valuations, while middle class property owners have to pay at 2000 valuations. I'm talking about SMART restrictions on property tax reductions for corporations.