KDM and Mrs. KDM, CONGRATULAITONS!!!
I'm also not one of those who feels property tax is rent on the property you own. Long time educator as well as a city official for several years, both or which rely on taxes to operate. My feelings are that taxes are payment a person makes for some services they receive. Road maintenance, police, water and sewer in the city, etc. Education is also in that group. And at some time, every one uses those services.
That your property may be taken by the county or state for not paying property taxes absolutely means you're "renting" it. If you don't believe that, stop paying your property taxes. The county won't stop fixing/plowing your road nor shut down the school. They'll seize your property and auction it off. Then, when the auction is compete and someone has paid, the county will take what's owed out of the purchase price. You stop paying "rent" on an apartment, they kick your sorry butt to the curb. You stop paying property taxes, it's the same.
First and foremost, I don't believe for 1 second that if property taxes had been eliminated that I'd be paying any less tax than I do today. I wanted property taxes to go away, in fact I'd still like them to go away but my reasoning is different than most so please don't tune out just yet.
I wanted/want property taxes to end for 2 reasons:
1. One could truly "Own" their property without threat of confiscation.
2. The people holding public office today would be the people responsible for making the rules regarding funding public services. No more would they be able to say, "Well, this is how it's always been done, I can't change the whole tax structure." There'd be a WHOLE LOT more accountability if the people who are alive and serving in office right now, today, were fully responsible for writing all the laws concerning public funding.
That whole business of "local control" and "We'll be beholden to politicians in Bismarck" was a giant political load of:
"We're all to CHICKENSHIT to have to write the new funding regulations and sign our name to them".