Los Angeles mayor calls on California lawmakers to revisit Prop 13

[marmar]

(Bloomberg) California’s perennial budget crises could be eased by as much as $8 billion a year by removing some of Proposition 13’s limits on tax assessments for commercial property, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.

The mayor of the second-most-populous U.S. city also called for a new tax on services such as legal representation that he said might yield as much as $28 billion a year.

Villaraigosa, a 58-year-old Democrat in his second term, called on California lawmakers to revisit Proposition 13, which helped usher in the modern anti-tax movement. The 1978 referendum, which allows tax reassessments only when residential property is sold, excludes some commercial property transactions in real-estate investment trusts, or REITs, according to the mayor.

“Let’s apply, as an idea, Prop 13’s protections to homeowners and homeowners alone,” Villaraigosa said in a speech to the Sacramento Press Club today. “And let’s strengthen those protections. We could take half the money we generate to fund schools and use the other half to cut taxes for homeowners.” ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-16/l-a-mayor-calls-for-8b-property-tax-hike.html

[abelenkpe]

1. Good. nt

[JDPriestly]

2. Taxing legal services is not so easy.

Why should lawyers pay taxes on their income over and above their income and business taxes if members of other professions don't pay similar taxes?

Why not impose special taxes on accountant's services and car repair services and hair dressers and doctors at the same time?

Why not just increase the income tax rates and be done with it?

Changing Prop 13 to permit increases in taxes assessed on commercial properties would be a good idea although it might have a bad effect on our current economy.

There are already so many empty storefronts. I assume the owners of the commercial properties that are empty are facing big losses.