532: 'No one else has done this for pretty good reasons'

Plain Talk

"The property tax is a good tax," Jared Walczak told Chad Oban and I on this episode of Plain Talk. "You may not love it, but you will not like the alternatives better."

Walczak is the state projects director for the Tax Foundation, a right-of-center think tank that focuses on -- you guessed it -- tax policy. His organization recently published an article critical of Measure 4, a constitutional amendment that would prohibit taxes on property values. Walczak has also presented his group's arguments to state lawmakers.

Walczak's argument is not that North Dakotan's shouldn't feel upset about their property taxes. "There's legitimate frustration," he said. The problem is that eliminating the property tax would produce "real economic upheaval" by shifting tax burdens from a tax that "has very little economic drag" to others, like income taxes or sales taxes, which do.

Eliminating the billions collected locally in property taxes would mean replacing those revenues with tax dollars collected state wide. "You're talking about essentially doubling your other taxes at the state level," Walczak argued.

"No one else has done this for pretty good reasons," he said, and he's not just talking about state governments in America. He said that no other country in the developed world has eliminated its property taxes.

What should North Dakota do to address the genuine public consternation over property taxes? He says state policymakers should look at caps on how much locals can raise through property taxes, coupled with some pressure relief valves that would allow the taxing jurisdictions to exceed those caps in specific circumstances, like if the voters ok the increase on the ballot.

Also on this episode, Chad and I discuss the presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, including everything from Harris's facial expressions to Trump's blood libel attack on immigrants.

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