What Do You Really Own?

September 18, 2007

Ever wonder why once you pay for something, you still have to pay to use it? I'm talking about automobiles and houses mainly.

Automobiles

When you buy an automobile, the first tax you pay is a sales tax to the state. Then comes the license plates, which is a recurring charge until you cease to use the vehicle. Year after year, you pay this tax and of course, the state justifies this forever tax as something they need to run the state government. The fact is, if you don't pay this tax and you allow your license plates to expire, you face fines and the possibility of having your car towed away if you are caught by the police. Still feel like you own your automobile?

Your Home

Whose house is it anyway? If you ever succeed in paying off a home loan, you are still saddled with the "rent" extracted from you by your local government. Only property with alloidial title is exempt from property taxes and since most ownership is in fee simple, you are going to be paying this tax until you sell your home.

This tax is for the most part, justified as being needed for funding public schools. Who could deny the little children? The truth of the matter is, justification of the need for property taxes is a slick way to target certain individuals to pay this tax while letting others off the hook. In recent research I have found that more and more local governments across the country are tapping into home owner's pockets by raising property taxes. This isn't a matter of choice. Once you own your home, do you want to move out of it because some greedy politician wants to put his hand deeper into your pockets? Of course not. Whatever happened to the home and castle analogy? That's long gone, it seems to have gone the way of the dinosaur, along with many other guarantees talked about in the U.S. Constitution and the first ten amendments to it, the Bill of Rights.

What this tax amounts to is a burden on people who basically have no choice but to pay it. If you don't want to pay a gas tax, then you can stop driving, or at least limit the amount of gas you use by not driving so much. If you don't want to pay taxes on cigarettes or liquor, all you have to do is not drink and not smoke.

But property taxes represent a tax that is foisted upon homeowners who have no choice but to pay them or lose their homes. These greedy politicians are targeting real estate owners more and more as a way to find what they never have enough of, your money. They care not if you are on a fixed income, if you are sick, disabled, blind or mentally incompetent. You're all the same to them, you own a piece of property and you are fair game.

The only way to stop this from happening is for people to band together and fight them on a local level.

Make sure you go to town council and county board meetings in your area. They expect and hope that no one will show up at these meeting and I am sure you know why. The more complacent you are about what your local politicians are doing, the easier it is to raise your taxes and pass ordinances that most people would not like.

How many times have you picked up your local paper and read about some new city ordinance, set your coffee cup down on the table and thought, "How dare they do that!?"

It's not like they are doing it in secret. There are public meetings to air these issues. Most people don't care enough to even attend.

If you want to get these out of control politicians under control, you've got to start paying attention and take a few hours out of your busy schedule to attend their meetings and voice your opinion, otherwise you can fully expect to feel indignant in the future when you find out what has been done to you, your wallet and your rights.

Get local! Get active!

It really doesn't take that much effort.