Tax caps won't help all people

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Monday's Supreme Court opinion, in a case involving an opportunistic 1999 state law, should encourage legislators to stop trying to tamper with how property is taxed following each required five-year reassessment. In the case brought by the city of North Charleston against Charleston County, the high court ruled the law didn't meet constitutional requirements for statewide uniformity in property tax exemptions.

Charleston was the only county to apply the 1999 law that allowed counties to cap property value increases at 15 percent following reassessment. North Charleston sued on grounds that its residents, who lived in an area that did not have rapidly increasing property values, would be punished. They would have been.

Without reassessment, property values eventually are distorted. Reassessment prevents the property tax system from creating artificial winners and losers. Before counties were forced to regularly reassess their property, there were cases of people living in almost identical homes on the same street — while paying dramatically different property tax bills.

Many legislators have devoted much time to finding a way to legally put their thumb on the scales. They want to protect people who live in their homes for decades from rising property taxes during a reassessment period. But they can't do that without forcing people in newer homes to shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden.

The Legislature rushed through another such law on the last day of the 2004 session. It sought to put a 20 percent cap on property tax increases for those in the residential, commercial and agricultural classes. Wisely, Gov. Mark Sanford vetoed this bill. It also was fundamentally unfair, and that's why it had many opponents among those who understood the consequences.

People who had seen significant property taxes increases under the vetoed bill would have seen significant savings, but everyone else — people in modest homes, most small businesses — would have ended up paying a greater share of the property taxes.

And again this year, legislators are scheming to cap property taxes after reassessment. Lawmakers can help by fully funding the state's portion of education, not passing along unfunded mandates to local governments and at least examining how tax breaks are handed out to industries. All of these issues can drive up property taxes. Legislators should concern themselves with such matters and resist grandstanding about property tax caps.