Taxes on tires and gasoline can be justified as a way to hit up motorists for the cost of building and maintaining the roads -- a near substitute for direct highway tolls.

The connection between residential property taxes and their uses are a little more remote (and there's that slight moral problem with seizing loot from people at gunpoint, rather than letting them decide individually which "services" they're willing to pay for.) But it can at least be argued, in theory, that people who live in our neighborhoods benefit from municipally funded streetlights, police patrols, and the like.

However, when people are transferring real estate, do they anxiously await the arrival of some state agent, to perform some service vital to the completion of the process? Of course not.

Yes, the new owners presumably “benefit” from the recording of their new deed, but that’s handled by the county clerk, who receives a fee for the service -- a fee which comes nowhere near the millions of dollars that the state can demand, in this case, for doing ... absolutely nothing.

No, the state taxes real property transfers for one reason and one reason only -- the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: When people sit down to transfer commercial properties, that’s where the money is.

But now it turns out the state can’t even manage to collect these taxes in a way which meets the “smell test” for compliance with Article 10, Section 1 of the Nevada state constitution, which guarantees us “The Legislature shall provide by law for a uniform and equal rate of assessment and taxation ... .”

There are 13 exemptions provided under Nevada Revised Statutes 375.090 to the real property transfer tax, which was doubled to 0.5 percent of assessed value during the 2003 Legislative session. (Because the cost of providing the state service necessary to concluding the transfer had doubled? See above.)

Exemption No. 8 provides that the transfer tax is not paid on transactions where the buyer purchases stock or a membership interest in a “single-asset entity” or limited liability corporation that owns the property.

In real life, that means the state raked in more than $1.2 million when TrizecHahn sold the Desert Passage Mall at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino here in Las Vegas to a company called Boulevard Invest for $241.5 million, but not a nickel in transfer taxes when the Rouse Co. sold the Hughes Center to Crescent Real Estate Equities for about $225 million, nor when General Growth Properties acquired the Fashion Show mall and other Rouse retail properties in Las Vegas in a $12.6 billion deal.

About $280,000 in taxes were paid when Barrick Gaming acquired the Plaza and other downtown property from Jackie Gaughan, but it appears nothing will be paid on the $17.3 billion worth of mergers between MGM Mirage-Mandalay Resort Group and Harrah’s-Caesars.

How do the lucky few escape the transfer tax? Simple.

Just before the Hughes Center was sold in January 2004, an operating agreement for each building was drafted by Howard Hughes Properties Limited Partnership.

For example, 3800 HHP LLC was formed just before the property was sold. The parent company then transferred 100 percent interest in the building LLC to Crescent, thereby avoiding the tax because no property title was transferred at the Clark County Recorder’s Office — the event that would have triggered collection of the state tax.

“It’s a loophole, and the Legislature knows good and well they did it, but nobody has the balls to do anything about it,” protests Stephen Gilmore, president of the Gilmore Co. (Mr. Gilmore and his partners paid $145,000 in transfer taxes when they recently sold the Westcliff House business center on Buffalo Drive.)

Sen. Randolph Townsend, R-Reno, says he tried to address the loophole at the last legislative session, but “Nobody wanted to listen. ... I couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to it.”

The best solution would be to eliminate the tax entirely -- as a tax on nothing but the filing of papers, this thing will always tempt clever lawyers and accountants into inventing new avoidance mechanisms, while simultaneously managing to closely resemble the onerous British “Stamp Act” which helped drive Americans to revolution, 230 years ago.

After all, state government today is so awash in windfall receipts that Gov. Guinn is recommending all kinds of “one-time” gifts, handouts, bonuses, and supplemental espresso machines, till the Legislature has begun to resemble those contestants on the old TV show, racing down the aisles trying to cram as much merchandise as possible into their shopping carts before the buzzer sounds.

If repeal is impossible, lawmakers should at least modify or eliminate these loopholes, making the tax apply to any and all transfers of majority ownership -- while simultaneously lowering the rate to make sure those reforms don’t dump yet another expensive windfall, like a green avalanche, onto the heads of state bureaucrats who are alreasdy shoveling cash as hard as they can.