  Michael Miller   By Michael Miller Attention: open in a new
window. PDFPrintE-mail  Imperative To Act On Taxes  U.S. Rep.
Colfax saw the problems  in our tax system 150 years ago  The
first English to plant themselves on Western Long Island brought
property taxes with them. The Dutch didn’t leave us much in the
way of culture or government, except for some words (cookie!).
Medieval English tax systems, they stuck. A little later in the
17th century, colonial New York’s earliest property tax
assessment laws actually borrowed language from England’s
“Saladin Tythe” of 1188, used to pay for one of the crusades.
Some of these concepts survive intact in our property tax system
to this day.  Yes, the land taxes that we pay to fund our
schools and local governments are pretty much the same taxes
that so annoyed Robin Hood and his gang.  The advantage of
taxing land was that it was right there where everyone could see
it, it couldn’t be carried away, and it was a stable, dependable
and roughly accurate measure of w