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Originally Posted by SebC
This is kind of the opposite of what's happening. It's people who (I assume) own property (albeit not necessarily rental property) who are claiming that renters don't pay property taxes. The implication is that if you're not a property owner then you don't have a stake in whether property taxes go up or down, and that's clearly not true.
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Good point -- I missed that. I guess some property owners have a tendency to see non-owners talking about property taxes and think "shut up until you have some skin in the game!" And on the other side, some renters don't think that property taxes affect them, so they just think the rest of us are whining.
But regardless, the exact path of money into the city's treasury is not what matters...it's the perception that there IS a difference that causes the debate. In reality, the economy is a continuous flow of value--from the point that something new is created until that thing is made worthless--and governments have to find *some* identifiable point at which to skim off their share. To say that the government is skimming only from "owners" because it's the owners who actually get the bill is crazy. That single point of taxation filters through the entire economy, affecting markets for everything from rent to lumber to beer. Everybody pays; but only owners actually see the bills.
A tax bill is easy to wave around and rail against. Trying to explain to a non-bill-payer that their Traditional Ale is 0.21% more expensive this year because we're building an airport tunnel is a little harder to do.