Tax Gouging November 14, 2005
Posted by Resident Egoist in : Politics , comments closedWell, you decide, because I still have no idea what “gouging” is supposed to mean.
Via the Washington Post:
PLAINFIELD, N.H. — The view from Brad Wilder’s hillside house is a 270-degree panorama of New England high country: the rugged peak of Mount Ascutney, the reddening leaves and white-painted houses of the Connecticut River valley and — on some lucky fall days — migratory geese cruising by at eye level.
His vista is stunning. But you can’t say it’s priceless.
Wilder’s view has actually been valued right down to the dollar: According to the town of Plainfield, it is worth $237,265. In 2003, town officials deemed it a bonus feature of his home, like a third bathroom or marble countertops, and ordered him to pay about $4,700 in property taxes for it.
Which left Wilder with a lot of questions.
Chief among them: How do you value a view?
Yes, how exactly do you value a view? Interestingly, the state has an answer:
Turns out, it is not a totally exact science.
“It’s more of an ‘I know it when I see it’ kind of thing,” said Thomas Holmes, the assessor for the town of Conway, N.H.
[...]
“I hate saying that it’s subjective,” said Gary J. Roberge, chief executive officer of [a value-assessment company]. “But it is.”
The Consequences?
The problem in New Hampshire is not simply that “view factors” are being used in property appraisal — that is by no means unique to the Granite State …
[It's that] the state’s views have become so sky-high valuable, and so fast. Statewide, one assessor said the maximum value added because of a view has jumped from a maximum of around $20,000 about 10 years ago to $200,000 or more now.
One example among many: In Winchester, N.H., Bennet Nicholson’s view of the Connecticut River valley helped bump his property value up from about $98,000 in 2002 to about $273,000 in 2003 — and more than doubled his property taxes.
“There’s no way that I could keep on paying $10,000 a year in taxes,” he said. Nicholson left the house where he had planned to spend the rest of his life and moved to Canada’s Prince Edward Island.
Hmm …. The state forcing people out of their homes because of high taxes. Why on earth isn’t anyone crying “tax gouging”? Or is it that “gouging” is a crime attributable to [the non-coercive activities of] businessmen only?
Well, looks like reality is having one of its habitual, ironic last laughs again — just as it did in the case of Kelo v. New London — the crude non-objectivity is getting to its ultimate, inevitable goal: mercilessly “victimizing” the very people it was originally supposed to benefit.
God Bless the Law of Unitended Consequences.
Technorati Tags: Leviathan State, Taxes, Price Gouging