twk said:
Three pages in, and none of the people claiming that we can easily abolish property taxes and replace them with consumption taxes have even touched on the largest problem with this concept, and that is the sales tax is collected at the point of sale, not the residence of the purchaser. If you live in a district outside an urban center, your sales tax for purchasing cars, appliances, and basically anything of value goes to a jurisdiction other than the one where you live. Even if you live in a urban area, retail activity tends to be higher in some suburbs than others.
If we went with a consumption tax, we'd have to have the state collect the tax, and parcel the money out based on population rather than where the sales occur, or else we would be replacing a system which pretty effectively spreads tax out over the entire state with one which concentrates it in a few jurisdictions.
An income tax would be slightly better than a consumption tax at handling this, but who knows how that would play out. We do, however, know exactly how that would play out with an increased sales tax, and it would require an end to local control over local government, because if the state collects it and doles it out, then the state will control exactly how it is spent.
That doesn't bother me at all. My local officials are just as corrupt as state officials. Property tax is unjust; it's time to end it.