Leave some money on the table for the forgotten taxpayer

An old quip about taxes is apropos as we look at what we will soon be forced to pay.

The federal government, so it goes, had simplified that complex 1040 tax form to just three lines. Line 1, How much income did you get? Line 2, How much of it do you have left? Line 3, Send whatever is on line 2 to pay this year’s taxes.

That bit of fiction seems to be how government really works. It will spend whatever it can get from us.

While this nation is divided by partisanship, members of both parties wholeheartedly agree on one thing: they will spend as much as they can get from us. They might disagree on how to spend it, but spend it all they will.

Which brings us to the single request to elected officials most unlikely to be heeded this year.

Looking at an estimated increase of 12.3% in taxable property values across Miami-Dade County this year, Property Appraiser Pedro Garcia as we reported last week took pity on property owners and suggested that rather than keep the same tax rates, all local governments in the county consider reducing their tax rates 3% across the board.

It’s logical: with an unprecedented 12.3% more on average rolling into government coffers this year (it varies a bit from city to city), governments in Miami-Dade could reduce tax rates and still be rolling in cash that they didn’t get last year, leaving a little on the table for the taxpayers who must cough up a great deal more money because their properties are worth so much more.

It’s logical because while your home’s taxable value has soared, it’s still the same home. You don’t cash in on the gain unless you sell it, and then buying something else would also cost a lot more than it used to. It’s a big gain in book value but doesn’t put a penny in owners’ wallets.

They just have to pay more.

It’s a logical thought, but one probably only Mr. Garcia will seriously heed. While he is one of only two Miami-Dade officials elected countywide, along with the mayor (the third countywide elected job, clerk of court, was filled last week by gubernatorial appointee Juan Alfonso Fernandez-Barquin), Mr. Garcia is the only one who can’t decide how your taxes are actually spent.

The other elected officials in the county, cities and towns have a vested interest in growing the level of taxes as much as possible. It gives them far more to spend.

For our best elected officials (seriously, there are many), added funds can help meet present and future citizen needs, and there are also many such needs. Think housing, sea level rise, transportation, water and sewer, social services, homelessness, police and fire, parks – and these only scratch the surface. The more taxes officials have, the more needs they can meet selflessly.

Then there are other elected officials who have pet projects, sometimes their own and sometimes the desires of friends, donors, their employers, their political party or those who can provide a lot of votes for the next election. These are a different kind of need that also can be met with a large pot of added taxes.

Don’t forget, elected officials often feel they have special rights to exert power simply because they are elected. If they can do something big with extra taxes, they can leave behind a memorial to their hard years in office, or whatever.

And officials of all sorts can point to that nasty old inflation that has truly raised costs of every sort for government. Inflation also provides the valid excuse to raise pay of all government workers using the money that property owners pay in their taxes.

With all those reasons to spend – good, bad or indifferent – why on earth would any elected official listen to a plea to leave something on the table for the property owners who pay the taxes to run much of local government and whose own costs are rising with inflation too?

Well, there is a good reason to listen. It’s called decency and common sense, because it’s the right thing to do – besides which, all of those property owners are also voters who will favorably remember a tax cut at election time.

Mayors and commissioners, as you draw next year’s budget in the next two months remember that Line 3 in the joke can be altered. No law or article of the Constitution requires that every penny a taxpayer has left must go to government. Mr. Garcia makes great sense.

Besides, it’s very good politics to leave something in voters’ pockets.