Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Negative Consequences of Using Property Taxes as a Main Source of School Funding

To this day many school districts still use property taxes as a main source of funding for their schools. This is despite two caveats: They highlight inequality between wealthy areas and poor areas in the school system. (That is the first one.) Second, housing market can fluctuate: In this case, we are in a recession and the housing loan crisis this. As property values lower, school districts now suddenly forced to make sacrifices just to keep running. It seems like every year they just keep cutting and cutting budgets . Even worse, there's No (Rich) Child Left Behind they have to deal with.

There are other alternatives to this problem, that is by implementing a county income tax. The income tax would be similar to the federal income tax but smaller. Another idea would to limit property taxes to businesses and people who have more than two homes (so they can only tax the second or subsequent home). I would recommend that both of these ideas be implemented next year, if not this year.

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