Renters, Home Owners, and Hidden Taxes: Renters and property taxes.

For renters, property taxes are very much a hidden tax, and is included in the price of the rent they pay.



Property Taxes are hidden inside of monthly rents.

In the same way that other businesses use the money they collect from their customers to pay the taxes government requires of them, landlords do the same.  They pay the property taxes assessed on their rental property out of the money they collect from their renters.

Renters are treated different under our current Hidden Tax system.

Renters and home owners are treated different in our current hidden tax system.  It is pretty much common knowledge that home owners are entitled to claim more tax deductions on their income tax return than renters.  Now think about how, for renters, the cost of the property taxes the landlord gets to deduct as a business expense is paid for using money collected as rent.  The renter is also providing money to cover the cost of property insurance, the mortgage payment, and all the other expenses the landlord pays.

With this in mind, if we pretend that we have two identical households.  They have the same number of people living in them, the same ages, and have all the same expenses.  For the point I’m making here, we will also pretend that everything about these two households is the same, including how much money they each make (job related income).  The only difference is that one is a renter and one is a home owner.

Under our current and very complicated tax system (which includes hidden taxes), the home owners has more deductions to claim than the renter.  This means that the renter will end up paying more in taxes than the home owner, even though their incomes and expenses are the same.

When two households that are otherwise equal, are treated differently, how is that not a form of discrimination.  Both make the same gross amount of money, both are spending their money on essentially the same things, yet one is paying more in taxes than the other, simply because they are a home owner, rather than a renter.

Thank you for taking time to read and ponder my opinion on this topic.
An Opinion Article by Dave Kemper
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It has been said that: "One definition of insanity is to do the same thing, the same way, over and over and over again, each time expecting to achieve a different result."
Therefore, we must either CHANGE the way we live, or we bind our future to our past as if with CHAINS.
"I do not consider myself to be better than anyone else.  But I do believe in exercising my right to not stay stupid."

David W. Kemper, Author
© Copyright 2014 by David William Kemper.  All right reserved
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