Article Title
Real Property Taxes in Maine and the Impoverished: An Expose?
Abstract
As the clamor for war against poverty increases throughout our society, there are few social and legal spheres that remain unscathed. Congress and the state legislatures have finally begun to show compassion in enacting new laws concerning virtually every social field in an attempt to alleviate the atrocious conditions under which this nation's poor exist. Moreover, the judicial system seems to have gained more awareness of the legal standing of the poor man and has begun to vindicate his once-dormant constitutional and statutory rights. One poverty target that has been hit by both the lawmakers and the courts concerns the inequities of our tax system. The harshness with which taxes affect the poor has been exposed and, to a certain extent, the disproportionate sting which poor people feel from taxation has been minimized. There is a trend in some states away from the oppressive sales tax and toward the more progressive income tax. Part of the theory behind our federal income tax is that the poor pay little or no taxes. Perhaps the obvious finally has been realized—the more poor people pay for taxes, the poorer they become. Furthermore, a logical extension from this premise is that the poorer these people become, the more money will be needed to provide public assistance for them. Of course, the bulk of public assistance funds must in turn be extracted from the pockets of the nonpoor by the vehicle of taxation. However, it appears that one significant form of taxation has been almost totally neglected in tax modernization and reform. This is the real property tax. The property tax remains the mainstay of local government finances. It usually falls most heavily upon those who are the least able to pay. It is now and always has been a fact that real estate taxes take greater proportions of income from lower than from higher income groups. Herein lies the acute regressiveness of the property tax system. Many states have devised means to alleviate this inequity without destroying the entire real property tax institution. Among the more prevalent of such artifices are homestead exemptions, aged exemptions," and veteran exemptions. The wisdom and fairness involved in such methods have often been questioned. Of course, each of these tax exemptions entails favored tax treatment for a special interest group, e.g., certain homeowners, old people, and military veterans. Although some poor people are often de facto members of one of the favored groups, the primary purpose and practical effect of each exemption is to relieve members of a certain class, regardless of their actual financial situation. The poor, in particular, have not been provided for. If a poor family does not happen to fall into one of the exempted categories, to maintain some semblance of a house its members must go without basic necessities, such as proper food or clothing, to pay the annual property tax. Inevitably, many of these families end up on the welfare rolls and ultimately lose their homes. At first sight, this does not appear to be the case in the State of Maine. No other state has gone as far in the area of property tax relief for the poor—at least as far as enabling legislation goes. Maine currently has a statute which appears to exempt from taxation the property of all poverty-stricken people. However, it will be seen that the law is at best a hollow victory for the many impoverished property owners throughout the State.