Our taxes support a crooked government
Text 
1 comment [ View ]By SIDNEY R. WATTS
Guest commentary
In his Jan. 27 commentary, Rep Brad Dee commented on the property taxes in the Top of Utah ("Legislators should be proactive, not reactive, when dealing with taxes"). In essence, what he said was that the state Constitution allowed for the collection of these taxes and that citizens of this state just better learn to like what has been, and what will be, shoved down our throats.
Hopefully, you won't agree with his premise and you'll let your state representative know you oppose it. What our state and county politicians don't know, or don't want to know, is that when property taxes were approved in 1896, the value of property was minimal, the rate was minimal and wages were minimal; it had been that way for a long time and stayed that way until World War II.
The basic question is: 1) Do the citizens of the state exist to support those in power, whether they're state, county or city officials? Or 2) is it elected leaders' responsibility to sustain and look after the well being of the citizens of the state? Well, these officials will all say they support the second question, but their actions don't support their claim. If you can't, or refuse to pay your property taxes, then the state or county can take possession of your property and evict you. They have done it in the past and will do it in the future. Is that fair?
During the Great Depression, many farmers in Utah were hit by drought and economic downturn. They didn't have money to pay their taxes. However, most of them were not evicted. Businesses like the railroads, mines and commercial activities continued to pay property taxes, and thus schools still operated, but most other county functions were minimal, didn't exist or were at a standstill. It would seem that in those times, state and county governments existed to benefit the people.
Such is not the case in our day. Nowadays, the purpose of people and their taxes is to support the many people in government. The unfortunate thing about all of this is we don't have a government for the people, but a government for the elitists, which is crooked.
Officials nowadays who have the power to raise citizens' taxes are crooks. What is the definition of a crook? Well, there are many, but the best definition is a person who takes something of value from another person without obtaining permission. The crooks respond with: Well, the Constitution of the state of Utah allows us to do this, so it is legal.
Does legality always supersede morality? This is what phony Christians believe. These officials should not have the right to raise taxes without the permission of those being taxed.
The incompetence of county officials was very evident in the hearing held last year in Davis County. They didn't know or wouldn't admit to the amount of revenue the county would get with a rate and an evaluation increase in the same year. Competent officials should not let both happen in the same year (pass a law, stupid). They implied they didn't know what the assessor's effect of his re-evaluation would be, but it would be minimal. They appeared to be surprised when residents claimed a 50 percent to 100 percent increase in their taxes. The assessor said he didn't understand how that could be. So, the commissioners said they would minimize the effect by essentially giving those with the huge increase a partial rebate, which they did with the final tax notice. We are not sure if this rebate will apply in the future.
The county assessor is a fall guy for the commissioners; he is appointed by them, so the citizens cannot vote him out of office (let's correct this). So, when property taxes have a huge increase like they did last year, the commissioners cop out and say, "We didn't know what was happening, it was the assessor's doing; we'll have to take a look at it."
Property taxes should not be based on assessed evaluation. If property evaluations were to nosedive like they did in the 1930s, would the commissioners go along with the shortfall in revenue, or would they want a rate increase to maintain all county programs? Well, what would a crook do? Take the easy way out, more stealing with a rate increase!
What are now called property taxes should be reconfigured along the following lines: 1) All residential land would have a flat fee in the low hundred-dollar range. Additional taxes would be rate based on yearly income, since each generation usually makes more money than the previous one. When a person retires or reaches age 65, his or her future taxes will not be more than at the year of retirement. Desired rate increases would be approved by a vote of the citizens.
The assessor's office should be liquidated. We should keep politicians on a revolving door to minimize the effect of their crookedness.
Watts lives in Kaysville.
Last time I checked, the Weber County Assessor, like most counties in Utah, was elected by the taxpayer. I noticed the writer of this op-ed piece is from Kaysville. As I am not a resident of Davis County, I will have to take the writers word for it that the Davis County Assessor is appointed. I am sure that the writer would not intentionally publish false information as that would be "crooked". Oops...too late... a quick check of factual information shows that the Davis County Assessor is elected by the residents/voters of Davis County as the writer suggests it should be. I hope that he writing "truthful" information and not inflamatory "half truths" as a "crooked" person would do and is merely uninformed.
I do like some of his suggestions. If we could only get around that pesky state constitution.