I wonder if a scheme where you could "lock in your rates" would work. Instead of just waiting for reassessment or whatever and having no way to know how it will increase in the future or hoping it stays the same for a long time, maybe you could agree to a X% yearly increase and pick how many years. So you lock in 2% increase for the next 20 years. This could be especially nice for the elderly and allow a compromise for tax revenue. Each property owner gets to decide whether to hedge or not. (This would just be for non commercial properties only.) This is just a hair brain idea off the cuff, just thinking out loud.
Perhaps land ownership could be renewed on different time bases, where the longer deeds have higher taxes?
For example, you could own a property for 1 year at a lower rate or 10 years at a slightly higher rate, and 20 years at an even higher rate.
This would allow you to pay a premium for a more stable tax rate. Perhaps you could accomplish this in the private sector through some type of "property tax insurance"?
This is a more reasonable version of California's Prop 13.
A fairer system would be to allow unaffordable property taxes to be deferred indefinitely, while accruing fair interest, with the property as the collateral. "Unaffordable" would be means tested. When the owner dies or sells the property, the remaining property tax is paid from the sale of the property. This creates the possibility of properties being underwater, however, so there would have to be provisions to call in the property if the ratio gets too bad.
