>>> sawicky at epinet.org 11/21/00 04:27PM >>>
No they don't. Local public ed is overwhelmingly
financed by local property taxes on residences.
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CB: Thanks
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That has changed in a few states in the wake of some court decisions that have forced state govs to provide 'equal treatment' by centralizing finance to some extent, meaning the use of state revenues instead of local ones. Typically the revenue used is the sales tax. My feeling is that this is a big improvement, though I don't know of any empirical work that shows this. The localness of property taxes suggests greater regressive effects since people sort or are sorted (against their wishes) among local jurisdictions according to race and income.
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CB: Michigan shifted to greater emphasis on sales taxes from property taxes for education a few years ago, but we lefties opposed it because we thought sales taxes were more regressive, since sales taxes are on regular consumer goods and might be a larger fraction of working class or poor incomes. (That might not be precisely regressive). , Plus I don't know that there was an analysis based on real data.
I think I get your point that richer areas have more money for their schools when the tax is on property.
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CB: I was going to ask about that claim too. What, capitalist corps pay the most property taxes , or something ?