OCR Text |
Show LEAF Cedar City Branch 4-16-76 Article I higher the tax on improvements, the greater the penalty on home ownership, home building and productive enterprise. , The criteria for a good tax given by Henry George in. "Progress and Poverty" nearly a hundred years ago remain as pertinent today: "1. That it bear as lightly as possible upon production-so aas least to check the increase of the general fund from which taxes must be paid and the community maintained. At Cedar City a LEAF (Land Equality and Freedom) steering committee hopes that an increasing in-creasing number of people will join in an organized effort to end involuntary unemployment without resorting to inflation producing methods. The objective ob-jective of the organization is an . economy providing an equitable access to natural resources and an equality of natural opportunity. op-portunity. Meetings of LEAF are held monthly but open breakfast meetings are held each Wednesday Wed-nesday at 6:30 a.m. at the Sugar Loaf Cafe. The breakfast meetings give an opportunity for interested people to learn more about LEAF and for LEAF members to get input from others. It is felt that this input is needed whether it supports or differs from the philosophy of LEAF. Local branches of Leaf determine their own policies and programs and receive service and support from the national headquarters at San Diego. Locally, the opportunity to make Cedar City a better city by property tax reform is great. By ' law the City's land values should be assessed at the same rate as improvements, but, by the same poor practice that is used by assessors statewise, land values have been very greatly underassessed. un-derassessed. In 1974 the assessed value of my lot was about 3.5 percent of market value and my home about 12 percent of market value. 2. That it be easily and cheaply collected, and fall as directly as may be upon the ultimate payers-so as to take from the people as little as possible in addition to what it yields the. government. 3. That it be certain-so as to give the least opportunity for tyranny or corruption on the part of officials, and the least temptation temp-tation to lawbreaking and evasion on the part of the taxpayers. tax-payers. 4. That it bear equally-so as to give no citizen an advantage or put any at a disadvantage,, as compared with others.". , That the land value tax scores high by the above criteria is readily apparent. That most other taxes score low is also apparent with no great amount of research. The greater support, today, for land value taxation from economists and municipal finance authorities will hopefully hasten action on this reform. If the land value tax is a good one (and more evidence is supporting the philosophy that it is the only good one) the reappraisal reap-praisal work of the State Tax Commission for Iron County will result in a greatly improved property tax. The Commission work influenced some aldn value assessment increases (mine was doubled) in 1975. Assessment notices for 1976 will be mailed out next month and tax amounts can be determined when the various mill levies are established. Why should the incidence of the property tax be important? Should we really be concerned with anything more than the total dollar amount? When taxes are low on land values, land, speculation is made more profitable, more vacant lots remain vacant, and more un-deruse un-deruse and inefficient use is continued. On the other hand, the In addition to a need for the reduction of taxes on buildings, Utah still has a long list of personal per-sonal property items which should be removed from taxation. This tax improvement has already been started and full credit should be given to those who pursued and obtained tax exemption for household furnishings fur-nishings used by owners in their own homes and for inventories of manufactured and processed goods. In 1940 household furnishings fur-nishings were exempted below a minimum and in 1959 this type of personal property was made totally exempt. Several years ago a constitutional amendment provided for the removal of the inventory tax and this tax has now been totally phased out. In the next article Iron County property taxes charged in 1975 will be examined. A proposal will be made for a constitutional amendment that would phase out .the property tax on buildings. Secondly, it would remove all items of personal property under a schedule that would drop first the classifications that are the most costly to administer with uniformity and that yield the lowest revenue in proportion to the cost of administration. Earl A. Hanson Secretary LEAF Steering Committee Cedar City, Utah |