Are Property Taxes Unconstitutional? Do You Own Your Property If Forced To Pay Rent To The Government?

Guest Post by Mara Zebest

Part 1 of a recent WaPo article series outlines how federal agents are seizing private property for unpaid tax bills (some as little as $44 as Drudge notes).

Property taxes could be equated to paying rent on property you own. In a nutshell, more government theft and a loss of property rights.

The best illustration of this is a video posted below from LemonadeFreedom in which an Easton, PA man pays $7,143 of property taxes in one dollar bills to make a point. This form of protest offers a great opportunity to illustrate many great points. Ironically, the big government that has no problem stealing from the hard earned labor of others—seems to have difficulty counting the money they steal.

This strategy certainly allowed an opportunity to make a lot of great points. Maybe this should be considered by all to bring awareness to the ridiculousness of massive government and the cost of inefficiency—that comes with it.

Lehighvalleylive reports the following:

Fed up with having to pay $7,143 in school taxes for a district his children don’t attend, a Forks Township man paid that portion of his tax bill last week in single dollar bills. […]

Robert Fernandes, a father of three, moved to Forks Township a year ago from Warren County, seeking lower property taxes for a larger home that could also house his elderly parents. Fernandes commutes to work as an IT manager for a company in Bedminster Township, N.J., while his wife home-schools the children, ages 7, 4 and 1.

Fernandes says he got a great deal on a short sale when he bought his home, but his annual property taxes total nearly $10,000. Reached by phone Tuesday, Fernandes said he doesn’t want to pay $7,143 in school taxes.

We don’t even use the public system, yet I am being forced to pay all this money into a public school system,” he said. “I don’t think that’s really either fair or just or even ethical.

It would be the equivalent if McDonald’s were to force vegetarians to pay for their cheeseburgers.”

Read more here. Another lehighvalleylive article suggests that Fernandes has gotten the attention of the Pennsylvania House and Senate to reform school taxes.

Watchdog.org also adds the following:

[…] “I’m not doing this to make anybody’s life more difficult,” Fernandes tells the collector. “Unfortunately, I wish the same could be said, you know, for me and many others whose lives are more difficult for having to pay property taxes.”

Fernandes wants the tax collector to count every dollar bill. As Fernandes opines, the collector accepts checks from people paying in a more traditional manner.

“In the land of the free, which is supposedly where we live, you would expect that property rights were respected here,” he says, “and obviously they’re not because we are never truly property owners in this country. We are merely renters.”

Fernandes said he wanted to create the visual so “people can actually see how money is being taken from me.” He makes it clear it’s not voluntary – Fernandes says he’s paying out of the fear someone will take his house. He said he homeschools his children and doesn’t use the school system.

The collector, rather than count each bill, asks that, together, they make a trip to the bank. To Fernandes and his video team, this seems ironic.

They take money from people and they can’t even count it,” Fernandes said.

Read more here.

 

Thanks for sharing!