‘Challenge to Prop. 13’

The Times calls for “the dismantlement of Prop. 13, either by the courts or by the voters.” The inequities cited, including the vast differences in the level of taxation for properties held for different lengths of time, support the conclusion that the current property tax system is in need of reconsideration. What The Times fails to address is the logical fallacy of the system itself. A tax on wealth, instead of income, is inherently inequitable.

The reason Prop. 13 passed was not the evil machinations of business interests, but the right perception of homeowners that they had never asked for the paper wealth that the tax assessor assigned them, and which led to the horror stories of widows having their homes of 40 years being auctioned out from under them.

The one-time sale value of a house, or for that matter, a business building, is of little relevance to the ability of the family or business in question to pay its bills. What is relevant is its income. While the property tax, in the days of King William’s Doomsday Book, may have been a serviceable device for taxing farmers and merchants, it is a hopelessly outdated means of spreading the burden of the cost of government in the 20th, not to say 21st, Century.

It is not written in the heavens that local government must tax wealth while state and federal governments tax income. It may be so written in the state Constitution, but the people, and The Times, can change that.

DAVID KASE

Palos Verdes Estates