[Mee-n-Mac]

Originally Posted by TomC

if you turn this around, it illustrates an interesting concept to ponder: why does the same house, presumably creating the same burden on the town's infrastructure (ie schools, fire/police, etc), have to pay 10x the revenue to the coffers because it happens to sit next to a lake? There has to be some allocation, and the one that was settled upon was the 'value' of the property - but that can have little linkage, in terms of fairness, to the burden said property has on the town. A lakefront 2 BR, 600 ft^2 seasonal house with no permanent residents, no kids in school, etc may well owe more in taxes than the 10 room house off-lake cited above.. Is that fair? maybe it is, maybe it isn't

Without opening the Pandora's Box of "what is fair" I would simply say that taxation has little to do with any concept of fairness and more closely follows the "Sutton Principle" (as in Willie Sutton the bank robber). When asked why he robbed banks, he was reputed to have said " 'cuz that's where the money is stupid !". The corollary to this is the "Can't get blood from a stone" principle. People want the Gov't (town, state or federal) to "do things" for them but don't want (sometimes can't) pay the bill when it comes due. Therefore you must get the $$ for these things from those that have the $$. So called "progessive" taxes, like income tax or property tax, attempt to do this. There is little corollation between $$ paid and benefits accrued on a per person basis.