Where "poor town" property taxes are absolutely brutal! Much of it is cost shifting from mandatory programs. that were once Federally or State funded.

So, the people living in McMansions get their tax burden shifted to working poor that can only afford to rent.

According to the Tax Foundation, commercial and industrial properties contribute a larger share of property tax revenue compared to residential properties; nationwide state and local governments collect 44% of property tax revenue from residential property and 56% from non-residential, mostly commercial and industrial properties. Commercial and industrial properties also have higher tax rates and are assessed differently than residential properties.

But yeah I would think commercial property owners would be all in on it, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13

As a consequence of Proposition 13, homeowners in California receive a property subsidy that increases the longer that they own their home. It has been described as a contributor to California's housing crisis, as its acquisition value system (where the assessed value of property is based on the date of its acquisition rather than current market value) incentivizes long-time homeowners to hold onto their properties rather than downsize, reducing the housing supply and raising housing prices.[6]: 4 

Another explanation is Proposition 13 drew its impetus from the 1971 and 1976 California Supreme Court rulings in Serrano v. Priest, which somewhat equalized California school funding by redistributing local property taxes from wealthy to poor school districts. According to this explanation, property owners in affluent districts perceived that the taxes they paid were no longer benefiting their local schools, and chose to cap their taxes.

Other estimates show that Proposition 13 may not have reduced California's overall per-capita tax burden or State spending. The think tank Tax Foundation reported that in 1978, Californians had the third highest tax burden as a proportion of state income (tax-per-capita divided by income-per-capita) of 12.4% ($3,300 tax per capita, inflation adjusted).[29] By 2012, it had fallen slightly to the sixth highest rate, 10.9%, ($4,100 tax per capita, inflation adjusted).[29]

Public school costs are shared by all taxpayers, including those who don't have, and even never will have, any children. So when someone sends their kid(s) to private school, they're decreasing the costs to the public schools by an amount of which they themselves pay only a fraction. GOPers who write big vouchers to those parents for the full cost of their kids' education are stealing from all other taxpayers to do it.

Thanks for posting this info, sop.

One does an active transaction.
Old people just living quietly in their house should not be paying property tax.
When house is sold, that is appropriate time to charge tax as percentage of price transacted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_exemption

Why should they not pay property taxes? No one should get to ala carte what you get to pay for and what you don’t. I didn't have children so why should I have to pay for educating kids? (Because this is part of being in a society and we all benefit from this investment.)

Older people still use roads, need fire department services, and an educated workforce that can help provide services, etc.. Taxes fund civil society.

My dad made a lot of money after the age of 55 on rental property investments he scrimped and did much of the repairs himself. But when he got older, he started receiving senior citizen discounts. He used to say “where the heck was my discount when I was working three jobs and putting five kids through Catholic school and didn’t have any money”.

Elderly don't have kids in public schools.
Schools are lions share of property taxes. Retired people do not drive to work and use roads much. Retired people seldom need to call police for domestic fights. And seniors pay electric bills, water bills, garbage collection bills etc

My wallet does not know the difference.

in which case you will pay an abundance of "fees" which aren't taxes but cost the same (or more)

Check into the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_exemption laws which have been created to prevent that.

And man, was it hard to get that money together. We skipped the grocery store run to do it, especially since the auto insurance on 2 cars was due at the same time. This month, it's the house insurance (and don't get me started on that!)

And it encourages slum lords. Here in NY almost half of the local property taxes goes to covering the state's part of medicaid, excepting the school part which is listed separately here.