The Geld | Would You Volunteer to Pay Higher Property Taxes?

From I Believe · 14:34

Show by Joel K. Douglas

At Christmas in 1085, William the Conqueror had a problem.He’d crossed from Normandy and taken England’s throne nearly twenty years earlier. In 1085, England faced the threat of an invasion from Denmark. Having conquered a country, he had to defend it.At Gloucester, William met with his council and ordered a survey. Who held the land? What was it worth? What resources could the kingdom provide?The following year, officials gathered the information that became the Domesday Book. Estates, ploughs, mills, livestock. Who had held the property before the conquest, who held it now, and what had happened to its value.William already had a land tax. He hadn’t invented it. The tax was called the geld, and surviving accounts from southwestern England tell us what collecting it looked like.The charge was six shillings, or seventy-two silver pennies, for each taxable unit of land called a hide. It wasn’t a percentage of a house’s market value. Almost a third of the hides in those accounts were exempt because they were farmed directly for the king and his barons.The collectors gathered the money. Other men carried the silver to the treasury at Winchester. They even claimed expenses for the horses, leather bags, and sealing wax.More than nine hundred years ago, collecting taxes already came with an expense report.This wasn’t a society of homeowners as we understand that word. There were free landholders, dependent peasants, and enslaved people, with very different rights and obligations. They weren’t electing William or voting on his budget.And then in America, a key difference is government by the people, for the people. The king doesn’t tax us.In 1776, the Declaration of Independence complained of taxes imposed without consent. But winning independence didn’t settle what a fair tax bill looked like.In 1786, farmers in Massachusetts were gathering outside courthouses. Some had served in the Revolution. They’d helped win independence, but military service hadn’t reliably brought payment. Cash was scarce. Debts and taxes were due. Farmers faced losing their property.They petitioned for relief. When that didn’t produce the changes they wanted, protesters blocked court proceedings. Daniel Shays, a former Continental Army captain, became one of their leaders.The government they resisted was now their own.Meanwhile, Congress struggled to pay its bills. Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government depended on the states to supply money. It couldn’t reliably compel them to provide it.The Constitution gave Congress the power to tax. Revenue bills had to begin in the House of Representatives, and federal receipts and expenditures had to be published. Taxation was a responsibility of the government Americans were building, with elected representatives to answer for it.So when did property taxes become like they are now? Mostly a county or city thing, rather than a federal tax?There wasn’t one federal decision to hand property taxes down to the counties. Communities had been using them for a long time. They needed schools, roads, and other services. Land and buildings were visible, stayed in place, and could be assessed.Property taxes also supplied substantial revenue to state governments. But states developed income and sales taxes, and the balance changed.In 1902, property taxes supplied about forty-five percent of state governments’ general revenue from their own sources. By 1942, that was about six percent. For local governments, it was still about eighty-one percent.And now my wife and I are looking at our property-tax statement for the year. Included with it is a sheet directing us to the county website, where we can apply for a twenty-five percent homeowner exemption.My wife thinks we should not get the exemption.I’m on the fence.I’m not against property taxes in principle. I’m not suggesting somebody else pick up my tax bill, because we do need to pay for services.What I’m saying is, and this is the part that’s a little sticky: Why is the property tax exemption voluntary? If I choose not to seek the exemption, and my neighbors do, then that doesn’t make sense to me.The question isn’t really, do you want to pay your property taxes? It’s, should you willingly pay more in property taxes?Our government does a poor job of saying where the money goes and tracking to outcomes. Their answer to why we pay taxes for roads, schools, and whatever. That, to me, is a terrible justification.Look at a school’s costs. There’s all kinds of stuff hidden in there. It just says salary, fringe, supplies, equipment. It doesn’t show what that really means.And selfishly, I say this: if my name went on a list because I chose to pay more taxes, and then if my house caught on fire the county responded more urgently because I paid more, I would understand the justification for paying more.I could see what I was getting. But what does willingly paying more get us now?Again, let’s look at schools. What are the performance measures the…

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