Ed Felien wrote:
Can the property tax be made progressive? What would you suggest as a form of progressive taxation? You say the income tax is the only progressive tax. Are you suggesting a City income tax? or just more aid from the state (which may be subject to the whims of an unfriendly administration)?
Absolutely property taxes could be progressive without much difficulty. For example, in 1998, the property tax system was more progressive than it is now. There used to be three tax classification rates for homes (1%, 2% and 3% depending on how much your house was worth) but somewhere along the way (surprise) the top rate one went away (now there is only 1% and 1.65%). If the State wanted to make the property tax more progressive, we could simply adjust the tax classification rate to put more weighting on higher value homes like it used to be.
A city income tax would be problematic because it would give people a disincentive to live in Minneapolis.
Regarding state aid, a good start would be to restore the substantial cuts in Local Government Aid made over the last couple of years.
Thanks for the good questions. Carol Becker Longfellow Future Member, Board of Estimate and Taxation REMINDERS: 1. Be civil! Please read the NEW RULES at http://www.e-democracy.org/rules. If you think a member is in violation, contact the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@mnforum.org Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
