The Asbury Park Press misguided

Here is my most recent letter to the APP.

The Press has done a nice job of keeping the property tax discussion under the microscope of public awareness. The taxpaying public owes it many thanks.

In its editorials, it has correctly analyzed the shortcomings and benefits of many of the cost savings proposals. It has tried to focus on state legislator’s efforts or lack thereof. It has rightly ruled out tax increases as a full or partial solution. What it has wrongly done is summarily rule out shifting of the tax burden.

The Press, along with most of the major players in this quest to fix the property tax dilemma, forgets the fundamental reason the outcry against property taxes has reached a crescendo. It is because they are unfair.

Everyone hates to pay taxes. But most are not averse to paying their fair share. But the property tax burden is inordinately skewed in favor of those with upper incomes and against those in lower brackets.

Shifting the tax burden so it is more equitably distributed is what we need to make the singular and major focus of this process. Efforts to find cost savings are also critical and a basic part of the solution. But bringing fairness to how government services are funded by taxpayers is a moral imperative of the first order.

Maintaining the status quo by ruling out shifting the present unfair property tax to a more broad-based tax such as the income tax precludes addressing the very essence of what our nation was founded for: Equal justice for all. The property tax is not just because it is not fair.



Visit my website dedicated to ending the property tax: http://EndPT.org