Cities don’t have the skill to tax wealth

RE: Higher MPAC assessments are a mixed bag (July 13)

The Spec has poked its toe at the fetid subject of property assessments. But greater attention should be paid to the notion of assessment based on market value as having distorted property tax into a tax on wealth. We already have income taxes to tax wealth, so I disagree with cities attempting to do the same. That position stems from my view that cities do not have the skill set to tax wealth and do not have the mandate for it either.

A simple illustration is a bay area house, which might have an increase of 40 per cent over four years, whereas a house elsewhere has gone up by only 20 per cent. Does this mean the bay area house is putting out more garbage all of sudden? Or needs more police protection, or maybe the risk of fire jumped up for some inexplicable reason? Any thinking person can see the disconnect here. A tax jump for the first house has nothing to do with where the taxes are spent by the city.

Emil Sekerak, Hamilton