The Declaration of Independence recognizes that our basic rights come from our Creator rather than from government.

• We believe these rights are unalienable and are not favors granted by elected officials.
• Government exists to secure and protect rights—not to sell them back to citizens through yearly payments.

The Georgia Constitution states:

James Madison wrote that government is instituted to protect property of every sort and that a just government secures to every person what belongs to him.

John Locke described property broadly as a person’s life, liberty, and estate.

Our position: When a person must make recurring payments to the government to avoid losing fully paid-for land, ownership begins to resemble a permanent lease rather than complete private ownership.

United States Constitution:

• Article I contains apportionment requirements for certain federal direct taxes.
• The Fifth Amendment prohibits the taking of private property for public use without just compensation.
• The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from depriving any person of property without due process of law.

Georgia Constitution:

• Article I protects life, liberty, and property through due process.
• Protection of persons and property is described as a paramount duty of government.
• Georgia’s taxation provisions require taxation to comply with constitutional and statutory standards.

The following decisions are frequently cited when discussing constitutional rights, taxation, and government power:

• Murdock v. Pennsylvania: Concerned a licensing tax imposed on religious evangelism and the exercise of First Amendment rights.
• McCulloch v. Maryland: Included the well-known principle that the power to tax involves the power to destroy.
• Crandall v. Nevada: Invalidated a state tax that burdened travel from the state.
• Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co.: Addressed the federal direct-tax apportionment requirement in the context of income derived from property.

These decisions support broader arguments about limits on taxation, but they have not been interpreted by courts as eliminating ordinary state and local property taxation.

1. It forces recurring payment to retain land that may already be completely paid for.
2. Failure to pay can eventually result in liens, penalties, tax sales, and loss of the property.
3. Rising assessments can increase the burden even when the owner has not sold the property or received additional income.
4. Property owners may feel they have little meaningful control over valuations, millage rates, and government spending.
5. The tax can place elderly people, farmers, families, and people on fixed incomes at risk of losing property they have owned for many years.

Georgia law provides procedures involving annual assessment notices, taxpayer appeals, millage rates, rollback calculations, public notices, and hearings.

• Assessment notices generally explain the value placed on the property and the deadline for filing an appeal.
• Georgia law provides a formal process for challenging assessments.
• When reassessments increase a tax digest, rollback-rate and public notice requirements may apply depending on the millage rate adopted.

A failure to follow a legal requirement may provide grounds for a challenge, but it does not automatically establish that every property tax is void. Each situation depends on the applicable facts, notices, millage action, and legal procedure.

Many property owners object to paying high school taxes when they have no children enrolled, homeschool their children, use private schools, or disagree with how the public-school system operates.

We believe taxpayers and parents deserve transparency, accountability, and a meaningful voice concerning how school-tax money is spent and what publicly funded institutions teach.

Current law generally does not exempt a property owner from school taxes solely because the owner has no children enrolled or objects on religious grounds. This remains an issue we believe should be addressed through legislation and public action.