Your claim that property values rise and fall according to the availability of services is plausible until we remember that the widespread loss of pubs, corner shops, butchers, small garages etc nationwide over the past 15 years have had no impact on property values anywhere.
Well, first of all, we don't know that this is the case. Property values have risen while these businesses closed, but how do we know that they wouldn't have risen even more if the businesses had remained open?
But, even if we assume that there was no negative impact on property values, bear in mind that the reason these businesses failed was that they became non-viable; they weren't providing services that people valued enough to pay the cost of. And it stands to reason that the loss of services that people don't value wouldn't signficantly affect property prices. It doesn't follow that the loss of water, sewage, roads, public transport, etc would not affect property prices.
My water costs me 100% and my taxes pays for 90% of the cost of yours.
Your water cost you 100% of what?
Why should income taxpayers who use the bus for example but who don't own a property, or worse still live at low cost in a property provided by the State, have their bus rides subsidised by property owners who have mortgage and property management costs to meet too?
Why should the bus rider care that property owners have mortgage and property management costs to meet? What relevance has that got to anything?
I've already identified public transport as a service that has diverse benefits. It enhances the value of the properties that it serves, but it also confers benefits on non-property owners — the people who ride the buses; the businesses in which those people are employees or customers. So, logically it ought to be funded from a mix of sources. Fund it exclusively out of income tax, and you are transferring wealth from the rest of the community to property owners for no good reason that I can think of; fund it exclusively from property taxes and you are transferring wealth from property owners to the rest of the community, again for no good reason.
The point — or one of the points — of a market value based property tax is that it will automatically capture, for the taxpayers, a share in any enhancement to property values that results from taxpayer expenditure. In Dublin, for example, houses near to the Dart have their value enhanced relative to houses that are far from the Dart; a value-based property tax (re)captures a share of that for the taxpayers who paid for it. Houses in e.g. Cavan don't benefit from the provision of the Dart and so their tax bills won't go up, but if they benefit from the provision of some other service, and their value goes up as a result, then their tax bills will too. And if the provision of a public service doesn't enhance the value of anybody's property , then there will be no increased property tax burden for anyone as a result of the provision of the service.
