Today’s Guest Saturday post comes to us from Cheryl Pass of the My Tea Party Chronicle blog. You will be astounded at how far some local governments have gone to raise money. She originally published this essay on Thursday, September 27, 2012. [Due to a planned twelve hour power outage tomorrow, this Guest Saturday post is going up on Friday night.]
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MEANINGLESS TAXES – FEEDING THE SOCIALIST BEAST
Hello Cheryl, I just read your Agenda 21 speech – impressive! We too live in North Carolina, in Mitchell County near the headwaters of the Catawba River and we are very concerned about Agenda 21 spin offs where we live. Lately there has been a tremendous influx of progressives into the county and they have been making their voices heard. We now have a View Tax which I am looking into so that we can petition a repeal.
David Bischoff, chairman of the Board of Selectman in Orford, is one of those people.
Bischoff owns a one-room cabin with no electricity, no running water, no phone service, and no driveway. In his case, the “view factor” led to a property valuation of over $200,000 by state property assessors. He will likely be billed $4,000 a year for property taxes on a cabin that cost only $9,000 to build.
Too bad, citizen. Because New Hampshire tax assessors have also discovered the “view factor,” the view TAX. Simply put, they take the normative property value and move the tax assessment way on up just because you have that view. Some towns now even have separate lines on the appraisal records for the view.
In one case reported by the Associated Press, “the view added $140,000 to [the] property’s underlying value of $22,900. The property owner’s taxes are thus expected “to jump from less than $500 last year to more than $3,000 this year.” That’s not an incremental tax increase. That assesses a subjective “view” at six times the value of the property, from one year to the next.
In 1696 the Government introduced the Window Tax – a property was taxed according to the number of windows it had. The tax, which was eventually repealed in 1851, was hugely unpopular.
To reduce their tax burden some would brick up their windows – we can still see this legacy today on some of the architecture from the period – and the origins of the term ‘Daylight Robbery’ are thought to originate from this tax.
Asylum Watch 
Dear CoF readers,
What follows is an expansion of a comment I keft at Cheryk’s site on this post.
There are few things more contrary to the principle upon which this country was built than “death taxes” and “property taxes”. They go in the face of the concept that a person has the right to the fruits of their labor; the right to own property. Let’s focus on the later. People can go into debt and work hard for years to pay off their mortgage so that their home finally belongs to them; free and clear. Except that is not true. Local governments fund themselves in part by taxing your property. You may think you own it; but if you fail to pay the property taxes, the government can take your home and sell it for back taxes owed.
If I could be dictator for a day, I have a long list of desrees I would make. High on that list would be making a constitutional amendment to make it illegal to tax inheritence and property in any way shape or form.
The view tax that Cheryl talks about seens absurd and it is. But, our progressibe governments see that type of thing as “social justice”. So, if they cab get away with that, what is to stop them from, for example, seeking “environmental justice” by taxing property that has a cleaner environment than average at a higher tax rate? Do you see that there is no end to what our local politicians can dream up?
Of the Americans that do pay attention, I would guess that they mostly pay attention to what is going on with the federal government. As Cheryl so often points out, it is local government that is just as much an enemy to your freedoms as the federal government. Freinds, we can have more influence at the local and state level. USE IT!!!
It is up to “the people” who elected these politicians that are abusing their power to kick them out of office. Unfortunately it cannot be done passively. They need to organize and capitalize a campaign that will get them out.
The threat by itself may dissuade them from such madness as this “view tax” and will establish a warning for other similar attempts.
How silly is this tax? Well, someone pushed it thru and someone had to vote on it, right? I have a neighbor across from me that insists he likes his privacy. He has a 12 foot unkept hedge around his 1/2 acre. It is 3 ft off the street sides. The problem is, I drive a Miata, it is LOW to the ground, I can’t see over 12 ft hedges and have to pull out into the street to look to the west.. He is not supposed to have a 25 ft area from street corner back on the 2 street sides any higher than 3 ft, and only 3 1/2 ft the remainder of the street sides. The side and back yard can be 8 ft. So if you think about it, the subdivision rules as well as the county rules state that, but no one holds him accountable. I have complained and nothing is done, I have watched a number of kids pull right out on the street (50-60mph) at times and just get missed getting hit….ok, sorry got off topic. My point was his yard and house are in disrepair, I wonder if my “View” would have a less amount taken off in the case of what I have to look at? Are we not allowed to have a pleasant view anymore?
As I read the post, I was thinking about the places I have been in Western North Carolina. Asheville comes to mind. There are some beautiful views, there, and if you look at the price of property, you will discover that the market has already determined the value for that feature. The value of the view is built into the price of the land.
The idea that you can tax someone independently for their backyard view is silly. It is just an excuse to lard on more taxes, like the carbon tax our government would love to put on our society for no reason other than to increase tax revenues. We know who that feeds.
It is all about the money, and for elected and apoijnted politicical figures to set in air-conditioned offices, waste public time calculating how to tax the public more, and generally live little disgusting lives while the rest of us pay for the party.
Yes, Bob, you are right…”the market has already determined the value of that feature…..it is about “paying salaries to people who sit in air-conditioned offices and waste public time”….And those folks will fight you tooth and nail to keep those worthless jobs. They will lie, cheat, extort, bribe, whatever it takes to soak the taxpayers to pay their salaries. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Wonder what those corrupt little Uriah Heeps would do with their lives if they didn’t have those jobs? Embezzling seems like the likely job for them.
Progressives are always arguing that the US has one of the lowest tax rates in the civilized world. It’s a lie. When you add it all up, federal, state, county, local, excise, and sales (use) taxes, it comes to about 55% … which is on par with Europe’s most socialist countries. Each dollar we set aside in taxes is a dollar less that we spend on “things.” It has a direct impact on employment and ultimately, tax rates. No one I’ve ever spoken with supports higher taxes, but here we are anyway. Why? Because most Americans are asleep; they have no idea what their elected representatives are up to. And this is our number one problem in the United States.