You can bet your taxes will continue going up!

As long as we elect people who are not committed to limited, responsible government, your taxes will increase.

Real estate taxes will be no exception.  In Pennington County, South Dakota, county commissioners recently decided to “equalize” real estate taxes.  Three people made this decision.  There are five commissioners, so three is a majority.  In this case, three of them decided to raise $1.6 million dollars from a group of about 475 property owners.  They accomplished this  task by RAISING taxes.  They changed a requirement for agricultural classification from 40 acres to 160 acres.  This simple change will more than double the real estate taxes paid by many of these unfortunate property owners.

Even some conservatives seem to agree that raising taxes on this group of people is a good idea.  The argument they use is that is isn’t “fair” for these property owners to continue receiving an ag classification because “the rest of us” have to pay higher taxes.  Never mind that when many of these people bought these properties they did so based on their budget.  Overnight, their taxes will more than double, forcing some to sell their properties or take other extreme measures just to hang on to their homes.

Why does “fairness” require an $1.6 million dollar tax increase?  Wouldn’t a better choice be to LOWER taxes on those who may be paying an unfair share?

A few of my normally conservative friends make the argument that the only good tax is one “the other guy pays”.  It seems that they are comfortable with a tax INCREASE “the other guy pays”.  What they seem to be missing is that this is really just one more tax increase.  If FAIRNESS were the issue, then let’s REDUCE taxes on those who are paying to much.

Former South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds chose this method of tax “fairness” when he was in office.  He called it “revenue enhancement”.  He made a list of taxpayer groups who were getting “unfair” advantage, and proposed to increase their taxes.  Some of those “revenue enhancements” were stopped by conservatives in the state Legislature.

Whether you call it “revenue enhancement” or “tax fairness”, a tax increase is a tax increase.

If government officials really want tax “fairness”, they would reduce taxes and stop continued government growth.

***Gordon Howie is a nationally syndicated author, host of Liberty Today TV and CEO of Life and Liberty Media***

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