This is an installment of the BYMPOTW (Blow Your Mind Post of the Week). In the USSR...I mean USA...if you have paid cash for your house, condominium, farm, acre lot, etc., and don't owe any bank, lender, mortgagee or other creditor a dime, and possess title to such real property free and clear, you really do not own it. This is for the simple fact that taxing authorities and other governmental (and sometimes non-governmental) entities will continually demand that you pay real property taxes (and possibly others taxes and fees) on said real property, and if you fail or refuse to comply, then the real property you thought you owned can be attached to, levied, seized and otherwise encumbered and taken, and you will have no recourse. I will defend this position because it's abject fact. While some of you may claim this is not the truth, or some sort of semantical trickery, I don't believe it is - after all, don't you have to exercise total and free domain over property, free of outside interference, claims of partial or total ownership interests, and free of any obligations to pay further monies or do any further acts before such property is rightfully and truthfully yours? Discuss.
This has always been the case, and it is unfair. Some of the radical tax protestors brought this up years ago. However, now that corruption has become so widespread in government this issue is being raised again. There is a bad moon rising on the USA.
If you take one old lady living all alone who has her house paid off after living in it for 30 years. Roughly if you add up the taxes this number seems pretty close to what the gov't charges for monthly rent for senior housing (based on sliding income scale). I just think that when the seniors complain about property taxes of owning a home, they sell, move into senior housing and the rate is the same but now without the house.
Thanks to the Kelo decision and the libtards in SCOTUS, the government can take your property and give it to somebody else. If you have some nice waterfront acreage and some bigshot wants to build a hotel there, all he has to do is show the government he'll pay more in taxes and it's a "gift" from you to him. It's true that the government has to pay you "fair market value" (as determined by them), but you don't get a choice about selling. Like your house? Market depressed though? The county can kick you out, pay you the rock bottom prices that currently exist, then hand it over to their biggest contributor. All thanks to liberalism. Isn't it great?
And it's worse than that really, because most don't buy property outright, but with a mortgage. Many mortgages make u pay the interest on the loan up front. By the time u have paid off ur mortgage, u have paid double the initial value of the house. And then there is hoping that ur neighborhood doesn't turn over, 30 years is a long time, and all it takes is for one or two of ur neighbors to go Section 8, and it's all over. U will never stop paying for ur property. That's why to me, it is best to become a skilled money manager, and stay as liquid as u can.
There isn't much to discuss here. Property taxes have been levied in the past and will continue to be. Non payment will result, as in yesteryears, in the prescribed penalties being applied. You have no control over assessed values and very little control over the city and county tax rates. The only relief has come from individual states passing constitutional initiatives to limit increases in property taxes and increases in assessed values in terms of percentages. Property taxes and penalties for non-compliance are age old and time immemorial issues. Nothing really novel about them.
The Kelo decision (5-4), reached in 2005 by the Supreme Court has since been rendered largely ineffective as a result of subsequent reform legislation passed by Congress and the enacting of statutes and constitutional amendments by the majority of states in terms of limiting and better defining when "eminent domain" may be used as relating to seizing a personâs property and giving it to someone else in the name of economic redevelopment.
What you claim is "obvious," I'd square off with you that well over 97%, and maybe more than 99%, of people here, there, and everywhere don't realize, because they still believe in the myth of outright ownership of real property in the US(a).