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Bloomberg) California’s perennial budget crises could be eased by as much as $8 billion a year by removing some of Proposition 13’s limits on tax assessments for commercial property, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.
The mayor of the second-most-populous U.S. city also called for a new tax on services such as legal representation that he said might yield as much as $28 billion a year.
Villaraigosa, a 58-year-old Democrat in his second term, called on California lawmakers to revisit Proposition 13, which helped usher in the modern anti-tax movement. The 1978 referendum, which allows tax reassessments only when residential property is sold, excludes some commercial property transactions in real-estate investment trusts, or REITs, according to the mayor.
“Let’s apply, as an idea, Prop 13’s protections to homeowners and homeowners alone,” Villaraigosa said in a speech to the Sacramento Press Club today. “And let’s strengthen those protections. We could take half the money we generate to fund schools and use the other half to cut taxes for homeowners.” ...........(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-16/l-a-mayor-calls-for-8b-property-tax-hike.html