You may have paid $250,000 for it many years ago. Maybe because that's all you could afford to pay when you thought you bought it. Fast-forward ten years and the taxers say it is now worth $500,000 and "assess" the tax you are required to pay on the basis of that figure. Your "gains" are $250k – and now you "owe."

Never mind that no actual increase in your worth – and so your ability to pay – has occurred, because you're living in rather than selling the house.

These ever-upticking taxes on what you may like to think of as your home (which of course it's not; if you are obliged to pay money in order to be allowed to occupy it you are paying rent) serve the dual purpose of preventing you from ever truly owning your home and eventually forcing you out of your home.

Via the ever-increasing rent-styled-property-taxes the "owner" will eventually no longer be able to pay.