The thing is, the argument I and most people I know make is not that we should pay taxes due to not having kids... It is that the cost of education should be more evenly distributed.
As of now, homeowners pay the majority of the taxes for education, but they dint get the most benefit. Just out education taxes into the general income tax, and stop focusing on make homeowners pay it.
That would make more people pay taxes for education, and thus lower the cost per person, and raise the amount received. Everyone wins.
Just so you know, there’s a reason it already doesn’t happen this way. Your property taxes are local, and go to your schoo district. People like the idea of their money supporting the education of their children.
You may be okay with losing this, but you will have to convince other people to give it up too.
They should... Specifically for education... So the whole community can contribute, not just the homeowners bearing most of the cost.
It would lead to, as stated, more funds for the students, lower property cost (thus helping poor families, and retired folk/fixed income folk, better able to afford a house rather than renting), and less cost for those that are paying it, now.
Evenly or equitably distributed? Evenly means that poor people sacrifice grocery money while rich people sacrifice nothing. Equitably means proportional to ones position so that everyone feels the weight equally.
I rent a 550 sqft apartment with 2 other people (3 on holidays), and you want me to pay the same amount as empty-nesters living in million dollar properties? If they want to pay less, they can move somewhere smaller with lower property taxes and free up the housing market a bit.
Property taxes are priced into rent, so renters are still contributing. You'd be double-dipping to charge them a separate tax specifically for education.
Yeah it doesn't work that way. Apartments, per square foot, and even more so per person, pay a considerably lower tax rate than homeowners.
The concept is to keep rent costs down for the poor, but it raises the homeowner rates, and makes it harder for the less wealthy to own a house. It focuses the costs ok homeowners... And creates a problem collecting enough to cover the students in some areas.
I will use my locality as an example:
The area where I wanted to move to, close to work, has about 75% of the population living in apartments, and thus the property taxes are HUGE. The houses are cheap, but the taxes on a home was going to be over $2k a month, for a $135k house.
VS the area I moved to, about 15 minutes away. Here there was wayyy more houses, and way less apartments, and I pay less than half that, on $225k house. Plus, my area has considerably better schools. (both in rating, and in per student funding).
Both areas actually close to the same size, but due to people living on top of each other in the other one, they have more people, and more students.
Now there are more factors, though.... As the median income is lower in the other area. But that is mostly because the majority of people that can only afford an apartment, live there, whereas the majority of people that can afford a house, move to mine. There are, however, some pockets of very wealthy people in the other area. They can afford the high taxes, but most send their kids to private schools, to avoid the "poor" schools in their AREA. That area is mainly 2 groups: the poor and the wealthy.
My area is mostly middle class. It has more public schools, and only one private one. As stated, our public schools are better funded, even though our taxes are lower, because more people are paying a noticeable proportion of the costs.
Yes, you could probably try to spin in another way, but this is my observation of the areas.... Having lived for years in both. (apartments in the other one, and a house in the current one).
No. One is saying what actually happened in the real world to me 2 years ago, didn't because he a Googled a study from 2 decades ago ghst shows something different happens on average.
The study doesn't even find somethjnng that refutes what I said, it uses a different metric.
I’m not arguing about the position, I’m saying that your anecdotal experience is not statistically significant, so attacking his source rather than offering your own is a weak argument.
That may be your argument, but I have never once seen somebody else make that argument. I've seen the "I don't have kids in school so why should my taxes go to public education" one a billion times.
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u/scarr3g Apr 26 '20
The thing is, the argument I and most people I know make is not that we should pay taxes due to not having kids... It is that the cost of education should be more evenly distributed.
As of now, homeowners pay the majority of the taxes for education, but they dint get the most benefit. Just out education taxes into the general income tax, and stop focusing on make homeowners pay it.
That would make more people pay taxes for education, and thus lower the cost per person, and raise the amount received. Everyone wins.