[anamax]

Prop 13 also stabilizes property tax revenues.

When housing drops 10% in a year, my property tax bill, like most people who bought a few years go, goes up 2%.

Yes, my property tax bill also goes up 2% when property value jump 10%. But, the cost of govt services didn't jump 10% that year, so why should property tax go up that much?

[dragonwriter]

> Prop 13 also stabilizes property tax revenues.

Not really; yes, it reduces total volatitlity in property tax revenues asymmetrically, since tax assessments fall without restriction in downturns irrespective of turnover, but rise with a sharp limit in upturns outside of a limited set of qualifying events.

But stabilizing property tax revenues, even to the extent it is true, is made less relevant by the way Prop 13 cuts property taxes so low that it shifts the burden to other, more volatile, revenue streams. (While the assessment increase is what most people focus on with Prop 13, it also capped nominal property tax rates in California at a low rate.)

[anamax]

> Not really; yes, it reduces total volatitlity in property tax revenues asymmetrically, since tax assessments fall without restriction in downturns irrespective of turnover

The only tax assessments that fall during downturns are the folks who are underwater, that is, the recent purchases. The folks who aren't underwater get a 2% increase.

That's why, as I wrote, when there's a 20% downturn, most people still have a 2% increase, which keeps tax revenues from falling significantly. In other words, stable.

I write "most" because one of the key arguments of the "prop-13 is bad" folks are that most properties are paying too little tax because of when they were bought.

You can't have it both ways. If you make that argument, the arithmetic shows that prop 13 stabilizes property tax revenues during a downturn.