[quote=AN][quote=CA renter]Many young people, in particular, really hate Prop 13 because they (rightly) feel that they are having to pay higher taxes/get fewer benefits to offset the tax losses from those who get the Prop 13 tax subsidy.[/quote]Nope. I’m pretty sure I know a lot more young people and those who even know what prop 13 is doesn’t hate it. As for hire taxes, they just attribute it to being in CA and they deal w/ it.[/quote]
By 2012, however, public attitudes appeared to be changing. Opinion polls conducted last year and again this spring by the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) showed that although residents feel Prop. 13 as a whole has been good for the state, a majority now favors modifying some of its parts – in particular, to tax commercial properties at their market value. This is a marked change from 20 years ago, when Prop. 167 – a proposal to permit reappraisal of most business-owned real property after a specified change in ownership – went down by a 3-2 margin.
Even among Republican voters, support for some sort of Prop. 13 reform now hovers around 50 percent. The latest PPIC survey shows a majority of voters also supports allowing localities to raise specific-use taxes with a 55 percent vote. That shift comes in the wake of failed local measures in Los Angeles County and elsewhere last November; designed to fund basic infrastructure, they fell just shy of the two-thirds requirement.
But a growing number of critics, Bestor among them, are part of a movement to change Proposition 13 in its application to commercial property by “splitting the rolls” and assessing commercial property at its market value on a periodic basis rather than only upon change of ownership.
Split roll assessments will probably be here within the next 10-15 years, IMO. Not sure about investor-owned residential properties, but I’ve yet to hear a good argument for tax subsidies for landlords, especially if they don’t pass along at least part of the savings to the renters. If anyone has a good reason for why these provisions of Prop 13 should stay, I’d love to hear more about it.
The reason Prop 13 passed is because people overwhelmingly felt that people should not be taxed out of their own homes, and I would agree with this. Most voters in California don’t support giving wealthy corporate entities and landowners extra subsidies at the expense of other taxpayers and California residents.
