Over at TPM Cafe Chris Robertson has an interesting Idea about indexing property taxes to income. If you make more then you pay more. This is not a bad idea but I wonder if there isn't a simpler way making it so that Property taxes don't adversly effect those who own their own homes but have trouble paying the tax.
Another idea that I've seen floating around and which I think would be a boon electorily is to make it so that property tax revaluation only happens after a house is sold. That is the property tax would be indexed to inflation but not the rise in property values that an individual has nothing to do with.
For example a person living in a house that they bought in 1950 for 10,000 dollars would be taxed on that property at whatever 10,000 dollars then is worth now. When they sold the house, now for 300,000 dollars the new owner would then begin paying the tax on a 300,000 dollar house. This would provide tax stability for the state because down turns in the market wouldn't destroy the tax base in a particular region, but increases in the market would, because of the increased volume of sales, increase.
The reason that it would be a boon electorily is that you can make it somewhat retro active, for houses sold more than 30 years ago for exampe, which would net you a huge contingent of older retirees, who well vote in large numbers.