Progressive Property Tax? A Mistake

(This letter to the editor is a response to last week's story on progressive property tax in Nyack).

I get it. If property taxes are based on income, only those in higher income brackets would be faced with paying, as Mr. Rosten states, "exorbitant property taxes." And who cares about those folks? As a certain local mayor was heard to have said in a meeting a year or so ago, "if you can afford to pay a million dollars for a piece of property, you can afford the taxes." 

Believe me, regardless of one's income, there's no fun in writing a check for $33,000 worth of taxes on a .65 acre lot with a one story house on it. There are far more things that one can do with that kind of money—including funding the arts, giving to shelters, tithing to the church. Things one might actually choose to do, instead of being forced to do.

The problem with this tax-the-rich concept is that it does nothing to address the actual problem: property taxes that are out of control. We need to stop perpetuating a culture that wants to simply find a way to justify higher taxes, and get back to making life affordable for everyone.   

I recently clicked through on a New York Times ad for Andrew Cuomo's gubernatorial campaign. Mr. Cuomo suggests, as his property tax relief program, capping taxes at a two percent increase, or the rate of inflation (whichever is less). 

This is progress? Finding a way to keep increasing taxes? Why not a yearly decrease in taxes?

(See: "The New New York Agenda: A Plan for Action" at Cuomo's website).

We cannot keep doing this. We cannot keep raising taxes, or in this case, ask others to pay a greater share than they are paying now. The simple outcome is this: people will stop buying properties that are over-taxed. Towns, villages, hamlets and school districts will kill their golden geese. Properties will go unsold; tax revenues will go uncollected. Municipalities will no longer have the funding to cover their budgets. If you don't think this is the case, ask any of the major realtors in the river villages. They will tell you exactly what kind of push-back they are getting on selling homes in the area with heavy tax burdens.

Can you imagine buying a home where $3,000 a month—a month—is only going to taxes? Not to principal; not to interest… just taxes.

When you combine this with "not in my backyard—no new development, ever" thinking as regards new residential or business properties, you wind up with an exercise in self-defeat.

Oh, and those grants your village or town officials will assure you will cover the projects they propose in your area? Where do you think that money comes from? That's right: taxes. It isn't free money, no matter what kind of low interest rate you're paying. It's coming out of your pocket, one way or another.

It's either taxes, or programs, folks. You choose. 

There is no free lunch. It's time we all went on a diet. 

—Pat Esgate, Piermont