Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Bumface
I get 50' of sidewalk, road and maintained alley to let people move around my hunk of land, dedicated sewer and water hook-ups, yet the guy down the street in the fancy penthouse condo in the 100 unit building pays more in property tax than me.
Isn't that a bit ridiculous?
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There's all sorts of oddities with property taxes.
The 80 year old widower that's been in the same home for 50 years pays the same property tax as the young family in the new build in some far flung suburb, even though the widower's infrastructure has been a sunk-cost for decades and the young family will be getting interchanges, and parks, and fire halls and all sorts of infrastructure heaped on them that they haven't paid for yet...
Or what about the family of 5 living in a large house that pays 4X the property tax of the single guy living in a townhouse a few streets over... They get the same garbage and green bin pickup, even though the family pays 4X the tax and could use more capacity.
The property tax system isn't perfect, but it's the best we've got... Could it be improved? I suppose so, but the idea of making the taxes punitive to the point of forcing people from their home, or devaluing the real estate otherwise, is ridiculous.