One basic flaw in this reasoning

is the assumption we, as individuals or families, all ought to get back

from the government the exact value of the taxes we pay to the government.

A second flaw is to imagine this value can be measured with precision.

The first reason we cannot

get back exactly what we pay the government is that the poor have less

money than the rich. So the rich always pay more. Since being rich is

way better than being poor, all other things being equal, there's only

so much sympathy we can give the rich. In any event, the poor have no

money, so there's no point beating a dead horse (and I don't mean to insult

the poor by using that expression). As comedian Seinfeld once observed,

reminding us of the obvious, dogs carry no money because they have no

pockets! We don't tax dogs either.

Secondly, government can only

achieve "rough justice." Rough justice is what makes all the

people on your street pay basically the same premium rate for fire insurance.

Some houses may be more fireproof than others, and some owners may be

more careful than others, but insurance companies can't micromanage people's

lives, so people are grouped into fairly uniform classes and those in

the same class pay the same rates. (In life insurance, those the same

age pay the same premium.)

With county government, the

family with five children pays the same school tax rate as the family

with two children, or even with no children at all. Those who send their

children to private schools could holler the loudest, but, let's face

it, using private schools is their choice.

The bottom line is that there's

no such thing as real tax equity, a notion that's intuitive for most of

us, even those who are not cynical.

The PTC mayor believes that,

in the name of tax equity, revenue which comes out of PTC should all be

returned to PTC. I don't know where he gets the idea that just because

NCR, Matsushita, TDK, Hoshizaki, Photocircuits, Fasson, etc. are located

in PTC their county taxes should be spent exclusively for the PTC residents.

Same reasoning for the megastores of Fayette Pavilion in relation to Fayetteville.

These properties are the tax

"crown jewels" of Fayette County, and the taxes they produce

don't belong exclusively to the cities in which they happen to be located.

(These businesses certainly couldn't locate in those parts of the county

with no water and sewer service.) So when PTC claims it pays so many dollars

in property taxes to the county, it should leave aside the portion that

comes out of the big boxes: that money is not coming from the city "residents"

and it ought to belong to the whole county.

It is unwise for our county

commissioners to concede that PTC ought to receive back all the county

taxes paid by PTC property owners, and then play the mayor's little accounting

game even if with different figures. Cost accounting has its limitations,

and even more so when applied to governmental functions. I have seen letters

from former county finance director Emory McHugh which explained all of

that to both the commissioners and to PTC Mayor Lenox. The mayor refused

to believe it, for obvious reasons, but the Board of commissioners doesn't

seem to have fully grasped what the finance director explained to them

all.

Reflect again on my example

of the county with two houses, one in the city and one in the county.

Add an extra house in either place, or a manufacturing facility, and see

how you can reason out the tax equity of the situation.

Conclusions: (1) tax revenue

never returns to the exact same place it comes from; (2) tax revenue never

returns in the same exact amount as was paid; and (3) attempts to allocate

taxes spent for the "general welfare" are generally delusive,

resulting in a waste of time and needless squabbles. In other words, the

term "tax equity" is as much of an oxymoron as a giant shrimp.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayette County

[email protected]