Jeff Browne, president of the Milwaukee Public Policy Forum and author of the idea the city of Milwaukee is a tax haven, loves the property tax. He may be the first person that I have ever seen call the property tax progressive. Work done at the UW's LaFollette School of Public Affairs, for example, concluded that it is regressive, as have just about everything else I have ever read on the subject. The LaFollette school (the one with a big old picture of Hillary on its home page)did a tax incidence study concluding that "lower income households [are] forced to devote a larger share of their income to [property] taxes than higher income households."
A recent study of tax incidence by the Department of Revenue found the same thing.
The Reddess and I are looking at property in the city. Homes with the same value have property tax bills that are more than twice what we pay in Mequon. We'll probably choose to pay the taxes, but to call Milwaukee a tax haven is to beggar reality.
Jeff Browne just likes taxes and he'll say anything to defend them.
So you and lefty blogger Paul Soglin agree on something?
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty much a math question.
ReplyDeleteThere's not much room for opinion.
My guess is that we react to the answer differently, but the answer is what it is.