Friday Finance 101: On Parfaits & Property Taxes
Public preference for property taxes stands in perfect inverse relation to the public taste for parfaits. Everybody loves parfaits[i] and everybody hates property taxes.[ii] No, I don’t plan to spend this blog post bashing parfaits. I do like a good parfait. But, even more blasphemous, I intend to shed light on some of the virtues of much maligned property taxes.
I often hear school funding equity advocates argue that if we could only get rid of property taxes as a basis for funding public schools, we could dramatically improve funding equity. The solution, from their standpoint is to fund schools entirely from state general funds – based on rationally designed state school finance formulas – where state general fund revenues are derived primarily from income and sales taxes. In theory, if the state
I often hear school funding equity advocates argue that if we could only get rid of property taxes as a basis for funding public schools, we could dramatically improve funding equity. The solution, from their standpoint is to fund schools entirely from state general funds – based on rationally designed state school finance formulas – where state general fund revenues are derived primarily from income and sales taxes. In theory, if the state