Richer areas get less state funding than poorer school districts. These districts have to scramble to just narrow the gap rather than have more funding.
The richer areas have higher scoring schools because wealth correlates with school scores probably due to a combination of natural ability and a more conducive parental and community environment (all multiplicative and compounding over time]. A change in taxes does not affect this one iota.
There are already flat rates paid per parcel in many cities.
There are age over 55 exemptions for certain parcel taxes to raise money for schools.
An income tax per parcel does not scale. How do you tax rentals? Who pays the tax for rentals? What if you want to own multiple homes? What if you are buying a house for your parents to live in?
True enough.
> Richer areas get less state funding than poorer school districts.
Also true.
> These districts have to scramble to just narrow the gap rather than have more funding.
The necessity of narrowing the gap is not at all obvious; as you point out, test scores correlate with local wealth. But test scores also correlate with per-pupil spending -- and that correlation is (1) small; and (2) negative. This is easy to explain with the model "poor students attract spending", but you also need the coda "...and it doesn't accomplish much".
I was not proposing an income tax per parcel, I was proposing a flat tax per parcel and also an income tax on everyone who lives in the city.
Parcel taxes should be paid by the owner of the parcel. Income taxes should be paid by the earner of the income. It's not hard to deal with.
So you are taxing an owner of a rental on their total income rather than the income they earn on the property?
This is so badly thought out.
It seems wrong to me to make someone pay tax where they do not live. It's not like the owners of rental homes are the people who use the city services -- the people who live in the homes do, and they should pay for them.
Another hack. Buy the biggest parcel you can find. Then you can build a huge home and pay the same taxes as the 800 square foot bungalow. Build a bunch of huge vacation homes. The help have to pay for the services. You don’t.
Yet another hack. Build a house and rent it out on AirBnB. That way you only pay the parcel tax and NO ONE pays the income tax. Genius. It’s a discount to run an AirBnB. Better raise the hotel tax to compensate.
School district funding in most districts is property taxes supplimented with state funds to a specific level per student. There are a small number of school districts that have property tax revenues above that, but most don't. IIRC, in the sf bay area, Santa Clara, one of the Palo Alto districts, and maybe one or two others are not getting state funds, but I think Cupertino is on the state funding schedule, and is well regarded.
Only the hardest hit counties like Fresno saw property tax decrease in the 2008 time frame. Although market values dropped, many properties were still below their capped assesment, and so their taxes would increase either by the yearly cap or because they were sold and triggered a fresh assessment. I don't know about other counties, but Santa Clara's assessor did assess down automatically; but the tax rolls still increased. So in that way, it's a lot more dependable than an income tax.
Isn't property tax a pretty reliable source of income?? I thought the income tax was an unreliable source of income because people can't always be relied on to generate income... but they do tend to pay their property tax.
Whoops, I just described Santa Clara County. And LA.
Among other things, this method of taxation tightly couples school funding to local home values. Areas with expensive homes have the best schools. (And areas with cheap homes have bad schools, which is not really what you want if you are trying to do something about inter-generational poverty.) This is self-reinforcing because now parents compete with each other to buy homes that are located in the best school districts, which drives up prices even more.
When home values drop, such as they did in 2008, property tax revenue drops too (Prop 13 is not a one-way ratchet, you can get re-appraised and lower your taxes, and 2008-2009 was a pretty convenient time to do that).
It doesn't seem like a good idea to base city revenue on something that is so undependable, especially something that is so often treated as a speculative investment.
What I would rather do is come up with a system where a simple tax is paid per parcel, perhaps a flat tax or one based on the size of the parcel, and which is not based on the market value of the parcel.
The rest of city funding can be covered by income tax -- unlike the current system, at least that has a chance of being progressive. No old people will be priced out of their homes by tax increases, and school funding would be distributed somewhat more evenly because not all high earners live in the most expensive areas. And if you are worried about an influx of high earners flooding into your area and driving up the prices, a local income tax would certainly discourage them.