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LETTER: Linking high property values to higher taxes is ‘a fallacy’

That is a fallacy that has been used for decades…
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To the Editor,

Re: Numbers were skewed, Letters, Aug. 4, 2021.

In the Letters to the Editor section of your Aug. 4, 2021 newspaper, one writer suggested that another writer’s property tax increase of more than 27 percent was the result of much higher property values. That is a fallacy that has been used for decades to explain large property tax increases from year to year.

If all property owners’ property has increased uniformly throughout the city, everyone would still be sharing the same piece of the pie, and their property taxes shouldn’t increase dramatically or anywhere near 27 percent.

Unless the pie dramatically increased in price, i.e. city spending, the cost of that pie to individual home property taxes would not appreciably change.

Thomas Gowan,

Port Alberni