Help Fight the New State Tax on Your Home!

Please join the statewide coalition!

A new campaign to raise your annual property taxes has kicked into high gear and we need your help to stop it. This new initiative, Proposition 88, is being promoted by a handful of extremely wealthy tax-and-spend liberals and will be on the 2006 November ballot. Prop. 88 imposes a $50 property tax, regardless of income or property value, in order to fund the already-bloated public education system of California. Backers of this new statewide property tax promise it will raise half a billion new tax dollars, meaning that over 10 million property owners will be subject to this new tax, a tax that will be over and above any current local property taxes, bonds and assessments.

To make matters worse, Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell is actively backing this measure and has declared his support for increasing the tax by $50 every four years!

Recent campaign contribution reports indicate that Reed Hastings and John Doerr, the wealthy proponents of this new statewide property tax, have contributed nearly $7 million in an effort to raise taxes that will fall disproportionately on homeowners of modest means. The added tax burden on the mansions of Hastings, Doerr and their wealth friends will be no higher than that which will fall on a couple buying a starter home.

This is the first time in a hundred years that a statewide property tax would be imposed and it is a dangerous precedent that we cannot allow to be set. If Hastings, Doerr and O'Connell succeed, it is a sure bet that other statewide property tax proposals will be pushed. After all, if a statewide property tax can be passed for education, it is just as likely that one can be passed for public safety, flood and levee repairs, transportation, public health care, pensions, etc. If Prop. 88 is approved, it could set off a chain reaction that has the potential to wipe out all the Proposition 13 savings taxpayers have benefited from over the years.

Promoters of the new tax try to justify it by saying the schools need the money. To give perspective to the current education funding "problem" in California, according to a recent report from the Department of Finance, the proposed state budget for fiscal year 2006-07 is $97.9 billion. The proposed spending on education and the education bureaucracy in this 2006-07 budget is $50.9 billion. That means over 50% of the state budget is already being spent on education! And this is at a time when enrollment in California public schools has actually begun to decline.

The fact is, on a per pupil, inflation adjusted basis, California now spends 30% more on education than it did just prior to Proposition 13. "Educrats" who pine for the halcyon days of the 60's and 70's when California's education system was the envy of the nation had better look to something besides money as the reason for the decline. It is strange to think that, if we were to return to a level of funding that we had at that time, we would all get a tax cut, not calls for higher taxes to pay for a broken system.

At what point do taxpayers demand more accountability and better results? The time is now, and we need your help!

Please join us in defeating this outrageous tax increase by joining California Homeowners Against the Statewide Property Tax — a coalition dedicated to protecting taxpayers and homeowners in the upcoming election (see list of coalition members to date). To join, simply fill out the form below and submit it. We'll keep you posted by e-mail as the campaign progresses.

Thank you in advance for your participation and your support.

YES!

I and/or my organization would like to join California Homeowners Against the Statewide Property Tax. By providing the information below, I and/or my organization agree to be a part of this coalition and permit my name or the name of the organization to be listed as a coalition member:

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Please contact us by e-mail or regular mail: Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, 921 11th Street, Suite 1201, Sacramento, CA 95814.


California Homeowners Against the Statewide Property Tax
(partial list)

Central Solano Citizen/Taxpayer Group
Contra Costa Taxpayers Association
Fullerton Association of Concerned Taxpayers
Kern County Taxpayers Association
League of Placer County Taxpayers
National Tax-Limitation Committee
National Taxpayers Union
Pleasant Hill Taxpayers Association
Sacramento County Taxpayers League
San Diego Tax Fighters
Sutter County Taxpayers Assc.
United Organizations of Taxpayers
Valley Taxpayers Coalition, INC.
Waste Watchers Inc.
United Taxpayers of Imperial Coalition


For more information on the threat Proposition 88 poses to taxpayers and what you can do to help defeat it, please visit www.noparceltax.net.