Property tax cap unlikely to ever happen
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- April
- 29
One thing most people are in agreement on in New York when it comes to schools is that school taxes are onerous and it’s probably not the best system to base school funding on.
Unfortunately, that’s where the agreement ends, as no one can seem to come up with an alternative that most folks can get behind.
The New York State School Boards Association recently interviewed Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who also is chairman of the Assembly’s education committee, about the state’s Tax Cap Commission. Silver represents part of New York City.
You can read the entire interview, which also touches on the subjects of school aid, the mood at the capitol and other issues, here.
Here’s an excerpt:
The reality is that parents are going to want their kids educated, they want to pay the price (in local school taxes) to have their kids educated and the caps are not going to work. It would be difficult to transition to full funding of education through state resources, which is the alternative.
Discouraging, but true.
What’s your solution to the property tax situation?
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 3:59 pm by Amy Vernon.
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It’s unfortunate, but many costs associated with funding schools are beyond the control of school districts. Fuel for school buses. Health insurance. Enrollment. Electricity and heating oil. A cap would not stop those costs from going up, and wihtout the revenue, the result would be cuts to programs and teachers. NYSUT opposes the cap because of the devastating effects tax caps would have on local schools. We’ve prepared a spreadsheet that would give you an idea of what would happen to local schools under a cap, using the last four years as an example. It’s at www.nysut.org. Look for the “worksheet” under “Tax Caps.”
The best way to control property taxes is for the state to increase its share of education costs, leaving less of the burden for local property taxpayers.
Many valid points, but let me play devil’s advocate here: Doesn’t that still leave taxpayers footing the bill? State money is tax money. Should upstate taxpayers be on the hook for downstate school funding?
All the answers raise more questions; I fear there are no simple answers.
Change it to an income tax, which puts the pressure on those best able to pay, rather than those who just happen to live in the house that they grew up in but have long since retired.
Either that, or eliminate the schools and put all the kids to work.
Amy:
Yes, it is all tax money. That leads to the previous poster’s comment about income taxes. New York essentially has a “flat tax” in which the top rate kicks in at a very low income number. That means a convenience store worker is paying state income tax at the same rate as Donald Trump. If New York were to go back to its pre-Pataki income tax structure (remember, his tax cuts in the early 1990s favored the wealthier New Yorkers)the state would collect billions of dollars more in revenue. This would more equitably spread out the tax burden, and tax pressure off the property tax.