December 5th, 2017, 3:19 pm
In many areas of the US (eg, Oregon), property taxes are local taxes paying for schools, city police, fire, roads, administration, and most of these levys are voted on seperately for each school district , fire district, ... And they do get voted down if the voters dont think it's good value for money. Since the quality of public services relate to the property value, most people are ok with it. But the part of the tax which is state wide (or country wide!) has little visible connection to the community, let alone the property in question, which makes it just another source of revenue. Worse, in many places it's based on the "highest use" of the property ... which means if you have a farm that could be subdivided into schlock housing lots which would be worth more money, the tax is on the latter value