Jay Wiley on Property Taxes

"But the former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people, and took from them bread and wine, besides forty shekels of silver. Yes, even their servants bore rule over the people, but I did not do so, because of the fear of God."
Nehemiah 5:15

Given the lukewarm comments on property tax relief the incumbent made earlier today, it's worth reviewing Jay Wiley's positions on property tax relief:

Eliminating Property Taxes = Economic Growth

Texas has one of the most burdensome property tax systems in the nation. Ever-increasing tax assessments have forced many Texans from their homes, led to costly lawsuits against assessment formulations, and is a complex mess that few people actually understand. Property taxes compel homeowners to effectively lease their own homes from the government.

Our property taxes are based on an imagined, or assessed, value of our home. Instead, a better system would be to tax the actual transaction price of the property when it is sold. This would remove the prospect of taxing homeowners out of their home through radically increasing assessments. This also eliminates the need for the 254 separate appraisal districts in Texas and their thousands of employees.

Texas should lower down our current property tax and eventually replace it with a small, understandable consumption, or sales, tax. Some of the most recognized economists in the country have estimated that such a replacement, dollar for dollar, would increase Texans’ personal income between 1.8% and 4.7% and trigger a net gain of hundreds of thousands of new jobs.

Economic growth is encouraged when the burden of supporting state government is lifted from homeowners and broadened to include everyone in Texas through the goods and services we all buy. Taxes are healthier and more fair when tied to economic activity and consumers’ ability to pay, instead of imaginary assessed value of a fixed asset.

Last legislative session, Paul Workman sided with Democrats and big government Republicans against providing property tax relief for homeowners until the pressure from conservatives became unbearable. We need conservative leadership with bold new ideas and the courage to fight for them.

Bottom Line: To see meaningful property tax relief, you need to elect a critical mass of legislators who are more interested in representing their constituents than appeasing taxpayer-funded lobbyists; in HD-47 that candidate is clearly Jay Wiley.