FEW THINGS SEEM to get voters riled up as much as residential property taxes, which in many quarters have gotten the rap as unfair and confiscatory. And so legislators are constantly searching for a magic wand to make the problem go away.

The latest magic solution is aimed at placating senior citizens, who tend to be the most outspoken opponents of property taxes because so many of them have paid off their mortgages and are faced with one giant tax bill every year, rather than monthly installments.

Currently, the Legislature excuses the property taxes on the first $50,000 of value of senior citizens’ homes. The legislation, which comes before the House this week for debate, would adjust that number upward each year to keep up with inflation.

A simple, elegant fix.

Except that the state can’t afford to hire enough guards to keep our prisons safe, or enough troopers to keep our highways safe, and property taxes are going up in many areas because the state can’t afford to fund the schools (where property taxes aren’t being raised, the schools are falling behind).

Except that no one has bothered to ask whether it makes good sense, as a matter of state policy, to require poor, young homeowners to cover the cost of giving a tax break to wealthy, elderly homeowners.

Except that it seems a bit bizarre to index a tax exemption to inflation when we don’t index many of our taxes to inflation.

The problem is that there is no way to make the problems magically disappear, because property taxes are an essential part of an interrelated tax system. “Fixing” only one part of that system throws the other parts out of balance.

Unless legislators and voters suddenly decide that they’re ready to eliminate entire agencies and government functions — and so far, as reaction to the governor’s modest proposals in that direction indicate, there is no such appetite — then any tax cut must be accompanied by an increase in some other tax.

But if seniors’ property taxes are lowered, which taxes should be increased? Everybody else’s property taxes? That’s what would likely happen if the Legislature were to pass this simplistic bill. And that would mean that businesses would pay more of the tax burden than they currently do, and younger homeowners would pay more of the tax burden than they currently do, and car owners would pay more of the tax burden than they currently do.

Those types of shifts always occur when you raise or lower any tax. And there’s nothing wrong with shifting the relative tax burden between businesses and individuals, old and young, rich and poor. Indeed, it’s something we almost certainly need to do, while at the same time making sure that our changes increase, rather than decrease, our state’s ability to weather economic downturns. But it is essential that we make those changes deliberately, rather than blindly, as we usually do, and as this latest proposal would do. And that is something that can only be done when you consider the entire tax code at once.