For property taxes, aren't property values based upon a certain % of fair market value? So let's say you bought your house 10 years ago at say $300k, and it is now worth $450k. You still are paying a mortgage based on what you bought it for. Now you want to sell it, and you make a tidy little profit of over $150k, because that is what the market determined the value of your home to be. But for the past 10 years, you were paying taxes on the $300k value, not the $450k value, so you made out pretty well.
OK now same deal, same values, except the town caught up with you and reassessed your houses value. Isn't that what this is? An adjustment in property value?
My house value has triple since I bought it in 1996. I have been reassessed, and sure as hell my taxes went way up, but not because of a view. It is due to the value of the home. Who determined that value? The market did.
To me it seems that the towns were trying to help people understand why their property value may have jumped so much by itemizing the components of their land value. I think that calling it a "view tax" may have been their undoing.
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