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Angelenos have been taxed enough — but the county wants more

Every year, Angelenos are reminded of what it means to pay their share. We file, we write the checks, and we trust that the money serves a purpose.

In Los Angeles County, that trust has been stretched to its limit.

When I founded the Los Angeles County Taxpayers Association, our county had been taxed, lectured, and managed into submission for so long that most residents had resigned themselves to the constant dysfunction as a fixed feature of life, like the traffic or the Santa Ana winds.

The political class had grown comfortable with that resignation. We were not.

Paying taxes is supposed to fund a functioning government, not become a recurring punchline — but for Angelenos, it has become a symbol of something worse: a government that treats every fiscal crisis as an opportunity to reach deeper into your pocket, with less accountability each time.

The clearest recent proof of what unchecked local taxation produces is Measure ULA, the so-called “mansion tax” passed by Los Angeles city voters in 2022.

Supporters promised it would generate up to $1 billion a year for affordable housing by taxing luxury property sales. It has generated roughly $280 to $350 million annually, well under half the floor of those projections.

Worse, a study by researchers at Harvard, UC San Diego, and UC Irvine found that between 63 and 138 percent of the tax’s revenue was offset by lost future property tax........

© New York Post