Most Popular
1. It’s a New Macro, the Gold Market Knows It, But Dead Men Walking Do Not (yet)- Gary_Tanashian
2.Stock Market Presidential Election Cycle Seasonal Trend Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
3. Bitcoin S&P Pattern - Nadeem_Walayat
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
4.U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - Raymond_Matison
5. How to Profit from the Global Warming ClImate Change Mega Death Trend - Part1 - Nadeem_Walayat
7.Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - Nadeem_Walayat
9.It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - Stephen_McBride
10.Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - Richard_Mills
Last 7 days
Nvidia Numero Uno in Count Down to President Donald Pump Election Victory - 5th Nov 24
Trump or Harris - Who Wins US Presidential Election 2024 Forecast Prediction - 5th Nov 24
Stock Market Brief in Count Down to US Election Result 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Gold Stocks’ Winter Rally 2024 - 3rd Nov 24
Why Countdown to U.S. Recession is Underway - 3rd Nov 24
Stock Market Trend Forecast to Jan 2025 - 2nd Nov 24
President Donald PUMP Forecast to Win US Presidential Election 2024 - 1st Nov 24
At These Levels, Buying Silver Is Like Getting It At $5 In 2003 - 28th Oct 24
Nvidia Numero Uno Selling Shovels in the AI Gold Rush - 28th Oct 24
The Future of Online Casinos - 28th Oct 24
Panic in the Air As Stock Market Correction Delivers Deep Opps in AI Tech Stocks - 27th Oct 24
Stocks, Bitcoin, Crypto's Counting Down to President Donald Pump! - 27th Oct 24
UK Budget 2024 - What to do Before 30th Oct - Pensions and ISA's - 27th Oct 24
7 Days of Crypto Opportunities Starts NOW - 27th Oct 24
The Power Law in Venture Capital: How Visionary Investors Like Yuri Milner Have Shaped the Future - 27th Oct 24
This Points To Significantly Higher Silver Prices - 27th Oct 24
US House Prices Trend Forecast 2024 to 2026 - 11th Oct 24
US Housing Market Analysis - Immigration Drives House Prices Higher - 30th Sep 24
Stock Market October Correction - 30th Sep 24
The Folly of Tariffs and Trade Wars - 30th Sep 24
Gold: 5 principles to help you stay ahead of price turns - 30th Sep 24
The Everything Rally will Spark multi year Bull Market - 30th Sep 24
US FIXED MORTGAGES LIMITING SUPPLY - 23rd Sep 24
US Housing Market Free Equity - 23rd Sep 24
US Rate Cut FOMO In Stock Market Correction Window - 22nd Sep 24
US State Demographics - 22nd Sep 24
Gold and Silver Shine as the Fed Cuts Rates: What’s Next? - 22nd Sep 24
Stock Market Sentiment Speaks:Nothing Can Topple This Market - 22nd Sep 24
US Population Growth Rate - 17th Sep 24
Are Stocks Overheating? - 17th Sep 24
Sentiment Speaks: Silver Is At A Major Turning Point - 17th Sep 24
If The Stock Market Turn Quickly, How Bad Can Things Get? - 17th Sep 24
IMMIGRATION DRIVES HOUSE PRICES HIGHER - 12th Sep 24
Global Debt Bubble - 12th Sep 24
Gold’s Outlook CPI Data - 12th Sep 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

The Police State and Property Taxes… What You Can Do About It

Politics / Taxes Jun 17, 2015 - 06:04 PM GMT

By: Casey_Research

Politics

By Nick Giambruno

A police officer pulled over Floyd Dent for a routine traffic stop.

A violent altercation followed.

The officer dragged Dent out of his car, appeared to put him in a chokehold, and punched him in the head. He then used his stun gun.


A disturbing but hardly unique encounter. These kinds of things happen all the time. It seems like there’s a new police abuse video uploaded to YouTube every day. In many cases, these incidents turn deadly. Dent is lucky the officer didn’t kill him on the spot.

But what’s really remarkable about this incident is that there was any kind of accountability at all. In many cases, the government and the fawning mainstream media sweep cases of police abuse under the rug. The State is extremely reluctant to hold its enforcers to account. But sometimes it’s forced to when overwhelming video evidence comes to light that sparks public outrage.

Once a video of the Dent incident became public, the officer lost his job. He’s now on trial, facing charges of mistreatment of a prisoner.

Dent also decided to sue the city of Inkster, Michigan, where the incident occurred. Surprisingly, he won. The city of Inkster settled for $1.4 million.

The problem is, Inkster doesn’t just have an extra $1.4 million laying around. So what did the local politicians do? They decided to squeeze a little extra juice out of the taxpayers, of course. They did this by raising property taxes.

A local media source estimates the new property tax will amount to about $179 on a home valued at about $55,400.

Now that doesn’t sound like a lot. But consider that the median income in Inkster is just $26,500 and that 40% of its people live below the poverty line. They simply don’t have an extra $179 to pay for a police abuse lawsuit which had nothing to do with them. The case has outraged people there, and rightly so.

There are a lot of things that are outrageous about this story. But there’s one that I find most instructive. And that’s the very concept of property tax. It’s an insidious perversion of property rights. How can you think you really own something that the government forces you to pay an insatiable and ever-increasing amount of tax on?

If you ask me, it’s impossible to truly own something that has a property tax attached to it. You would possess such an item, but you wouldn’t own it. It’s an important distinction. Stop paying your property taxes to find out who really owns your home. In actuality, you’re merely renting the home you thought you owned from the government.

Whenever politicians want to steal more money, they can simply increase property taxes and hope nobody notices. It’s like changing the dial on a thermostat. The Floyd Dent case showed this.

Turning to property taxes to quench a thirst for money is not unique to the politicians in Inkster, Michigan. It’s a universal feature built into the DNA of almost any politician in the world. Consider the bankrupt government of Greece. Here’s an excerpt from an article in The Guardian:

The joke now doing the rounds is: if you want to punish your child, you threaten to pass on property to them… Greeks traditionally have always regarded property as a secure investment. But now it has become a huge millstone, given that the tax burden has increased sevenfold in the past two years alone.

The sad reality is that there are few countries in the world that do not have a property tax. Fewer than 20 to be exact. We cover them in detail in Going Global. The only way to skip the annual property tax harvest is to own real estate in these countries.

It’s not just a matter of minimizing or eliminating property taxes, though. Yes, that’s extremely important. But foreign real estate offers a number of other tremendous benefits, too.

It’s a hard asset outside the immediate reach of your government. They cannot confiscate it without a literal act of war.

It opens the door for you to obtain an offshore bank account, residency, and maybe even citizenship, in another country.

It diversifies your portfolio and can bring income streams in a foreign currency if you rent it out.

These are but a few of the huge benefits foreign real estate can give you.

For a more detailed discussion, you may wish to check out Going Global 2015.

 
The article was originally published at internationalman.com.
Casey Research Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in