What if there were no property tax?

I was thinking of this recently. How different would it be if there were no property tax? Funding for our schools come mostly from property tax so there would have to be some other way to fund them. Sales tax, a renters tax perhaps?i wonder also would land cost more to buy? The immediate answer would be yes but I am not so sure about that. Since there is no property tax a seller may not feel they have to make up for lost revenue as much and sell a property for less. Even now you see the properties with the highest taxes typically sell for the greatest percentage of increase. I think land would stay with one owner or one family much longer because nothing would go to the state for back taxes.

Hello everybody,

as you guys know, I am from germany, and I was living there for 35 years before I moved to Texas.
over there:
Property tax only once at the time where you buy your property, after that there is no property tax. The rule is easy, every income and every sale etc pp can only be taxed once. Not every year again and again. Same for your savings, only the interest income is taxable.

So yes, a house or a property stays with a family for about 100 years most of the time. if you have a paid of house, well most of the time one of your grandkids will live in this house later.

School and University is completely free. (well not really, later more). There is a small college fee, like $500 per year. Everybody has insurance and everybody has a retire account.

How do they do that???

Very easy, it is all about SALES TAX, and INCOME TAX and a very high tax on gasoline.
Sales tax is 19%, income tax+retire account+unemployment is about 50% of your income. A gallon of gas is about $7 to $9. (this is why you see so many people with bycicle over there, lol)

At the time of GERMAN MARK as currency I had about 10000 Mark before tax per month, and 5500 after tax. Crazy, right?

What is better, the States or Germany? Don't ask me, I can't tell. Yes it is nice that everybody has insurance, but of course that does not come for free.
That a house stays with a family, yes I like this better, funny part: Still in germany the percentage of people owning a house is lower than renting and it is way lower compared to the states!

Markus

I wasn't aware that there was no annual property tax in Germany. that is interesting. So typically does the land sell for more or less when it does sell over there? Here the price of land and homes vary greatly but is most determined on what is loaned out. For example when people were getting loans easily the prices were high. Way too high in fact. Now loans are harder to get and so are jobs. people are selling land and homes way cheaper than before.

Selling a house in Germany:

People over there don't do that often. Not like here. Here you buy a house - sell a house - move somewhere else and buy a house again.

Over there you buy a house to stay, as I said often for 100 years in family. Since Germany has about 80 million people living in an area in the same size like here only the state of Texas. YES property prizes are always and only increasing.

And in Germany, well Loans are always hard to get, and the unemployment rate is for years around 10 %. So prizes are always increasing, but it does not really matter that much since private residents are most of the time NOT for sale. For business properties it is another story.

Markus

Such a different world. It explains something about my family though. We always try to keep land in the family. It is not perfect but the property I live on has in some form or fashion been in the family for over 100 years minus the brief periods the bank actually owned it. The place i grew up on was in the family for at least 60 years. Some other land for some time between that. We have lost some but if it were not for property taxes we would almost surely still have all of it. We never had it go for the taxes but some was sold because the tax was too high.