Just this past month, Orange County, California sent out over 60,000 erroneous tax bills to its residents informing them that their taxes weren’t paid… when in fact they were! To add to this loving relationship between O.C. and its residents, O.C. recently delayed sending out a half-million tax bills due to an over-calculation concerning a water district’s budgeting. I’m thinking Orange County should take a lesson from the history books, especially the Fries Rebellion
The Fries Rebellion sprang from a national property tax created in 1797 by John Adams in order to generate revenue for military forces. Those who remembered the hearth tax of England (a much earlier ill-fated form of property taxation) were infuriated by this new property tax. They became followers of John Fries, who was a leader in protesting the tax.
The first line of defense against the new property tax became stopping the assessors. If there were no assessors there could be no tax. Many assessors were beaten and run out of town (for the record I am NOT an advocate for this type of behavior). In some cases they were held captive and their documents were destroyed.
When John Adams heard of the rebellion he sent forces to capture John Fries. Fries was convicted and sentenced to death, however he was pardoned before the sentence could be carried out and the property tax was repealed.
No one in O.C. is tying up the assessors or destroying their databases (well, not that I’m aware of) but with so many frustrated (and wealthy) residents, the O.C. should research a little more on the Fries Rebellion… Or really any other property tax rebellion…
