IF YOU WANT lower property taxes, don’t vote for Amendment 4 on Tuesday: For most people, taxes will be higher with this change than without it.

If, on the other hand, you like the idea of subsidizing the taxes of a few people whose home values are skyrocketing, then by all means vote for it.

Even before we talk about why the so-called property tax amendment is bad policy, we feel a special need to explain exactly what it is and isn’t, because it has been more widely mischaracterized and misunderstood than any constitutional amendment we can recall.

Amendment 4 does not cap property taxes.

It does not limit or in any way change how much cities, counties and school districts can collect in property taxes.

What it changes is who pays those taxes.

Since total tax collections won’t change, some property owners will pay less, and most will pay more.

Our constitution requires homes and businesses to be taxed based on their “actual assessed value.” That value is updated, or reassessed, every five years. This amendment wipes out that uniformity and caps the increase at 15 percent. So a house that was worth $100,000 in 2001 and $150,000 now would be taxed as though it were worth only $115,000. If the value went up to $200,000 in 2011, it would be taxed as though it were worth $132,250.

This creates an inherently unfair situation. A new homeowner will be taxed based on the purchase price, and could easily pay twice as much in property taxes as his next-door neighbor with an identical house.

But it’s not just newcomers who pay more. And most longtime homeowners won’t actually get a break, because most home values do not increase that rapidly.

When property is reassessed, tax rates have to be reduced so that the total amount of taxes collected doesn’t increase. (Taxes can then be raised again, but that’s a separate issue, unaffected by this amendment.) If some property can’t be taxed because of this artificial limit, then the tax rate won’t be reduced as much as it otherwise would have been. This means all car owners and everybody whose home or business appreciates by less than 15 percent pay higher taxes than they would have without the cap.

The amendment is legislators’ simplistic way of dealing with a very real, though grossly exaggerated, problem: Some longtime homeowners get squeezed by property taxes because their home values have gone up as the neighborhoods around them became popular.

Most states address this problem with income-based circuit breakers; they might cap the percentage of someone’s income that can be charged in property taxes, for example. But the affluent people demanding change in South Carolina actually fought that approach, because they aren’t the ones who can’t afford their taxes; they simply don’t want to pay their taxes.

With or without this amendment, residential property taxes are coming down. Starting next year, homeowners won’t pay any property taxes for school operating costs, which account for about half the tax bill. And a new law limits how much other property tax rates can go up each year. People’s tax bills will still go up if their home values skyrocket, but those bills will be a lot lower thanks to the school tax cut. And if that isn’t enough, the Legislature could still give targeted tax relief to people who really can’t afford their taxes. That makes a lot more sense than this wholesale shift, which will primarily benefit those most able to pay their taxes, at the expense of all the rest of us.