Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1921-01-19
If Assessments Were Uniform.

assessed at actual Yalue, Che taxes
would be greater than the, income
from it and the prevailing miscon-
ception that all property ought to
produce the taxes and more for the
owner is in large part responsible
for condition exasperating to the
owners of improved property.
Consider the case of one who pur-
chased, in Columbia, in 1900, a cor
ner lot for $4,000 and has paid an
average of $50 year in taxes on
it from the time of purchase. No
house has been erected upon it and
it has produced no income. In 1920
the lot was sold for $4,000 and the
sellers profit, after deducting in
terest on the investment, was around
$4,000. Had the lot been assessed
at its actual value each year, the
owner would have been compelled
to erect a house upon it or else to
sell it to one who could and would
improve it. The outcry against high
rentals is due for the most part to
the. protection of the real estate spec
ulator by the law.
1t will be said that taxation at
market value of unimproved land in
cities and towns would cause col
lapse in their values but that is
scarcely reason for the values
should be artifcially supported at the
expense of the public. With possibly
one exception, there is not city in
South Carolina that has not an abun-
dant area of land suitable for dwell
ings and conveniently situated in
reference to business, but those lands
are withheld from market because
the people indulge their owners by
tax discrimination in their favor. 1t
has long been amazing to The State
that the great mass of the people
who do not own property of this
kind, quietly submit to the burdens
of such system. The workingman
who buys a small lot and builds
home upon it, with the assistance of
the building and loan association,
without protest permits the man who
owns the lot adjoining to be taxed at
a rate prehaps one-third of that at
which he contributes to the support
of the city and the state and their in
stitutions.
The same principle applies to real
estate inadequately improved. Many
a parcel of high priced property is
yielding :. low return because the
buildings, upon it are outworn. The
public treasury is entitled to rev.
enues based upon the market value
of the property and, if the false sys-
tenn of taxation has given to vacant
lots an entirely fictitious and inflated
value, that is not the public's fault.
The principle virtue of the new
law in North Carolina, requiring all
real properties to be assessed at mar
ket value, is that it has made assess
ments uniform. Were our assess
ments uniform, whether they were
20 or 100 per cent. of market value,
would be of secondary Importance.
So long as they shall be grossly un-
uniform, some of the people will be
grossly imposed upon. Had the plain
mandates of the constitution of South
Carolina been carried out the last
25 or SO years, we would be con-.
fronted now with a situation at least
SO per cent better than it is. The
trouble is that the people, whose
opinion the legislatures pretty ac-
curately reflect, insistently shut their
eyes to the facts.
Of course, uniform assessments
can not be had until we shall have
an assessing agency wholly free
from local influences. 1t is certain
that South Carolina will not have a
assessing and revenue
raising system of laws until the peo-
pie seriously go about getting them.
We are not yet convinced that the
people want them. We hear the hull
labaloo, but we have been hearing
it long time.
1t is entirely possible even now
that the popular wish of the tax
payers is to retain the system which
allows them to play hide and seek
with one another. The speculating