Property tax

A property tax (or millage tax) is a levy on property that the owner is required to pay. The tax is levied by the governing authority of the jurisdiction in which the property is located; it may be paid to a national government, a federated state, a county or geographical region, or a municipality. Multiple jurisdictions may tax the same property. This is in contrast to a rent and mortgage tax, which is based on a percentage of the rent or mortgage value.

There are four broad types of property: land, improvements to land (immovable man-made objects, such as buildings), personal property (movable man-made objects), and intangible property. Real property (also called real estate or realty) means the combination of land and improvements. Under a property tax system, the government requires and/or performs an appraisal of the monetary value of each property, and tax is assessed in proportion to that value. Forms of property tax used vary among countries and jurisdictions. Real property is often taxed based on its classification. Classification is the grouping of properties based on similar use. Properties in different classes are taxed at different rates. Examples of different classes of property are residential, commercial, industrial and vacant real property. In Israel, for example, property tax rates are double for vacant apartments versus occupied apartments.

Property

In the abstract, property is that which belongs to or with something, whether as an attribute or as a component of said thing. In the context of this article, property is one or more components (rather than attributes), whether physical or incorporeal, of a person's estate; or so belonging to, as in being owned by, a person or jointly a group of people or a legal entity like a corporation or even a society. (Given such meaning, the word property is uncountable, and as such, is not described with an indefinite article or as plural.) Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property has the right to consume, alter, share, redefine, rent, mortgage, pawn, sell, exchange, transfer, give away or destroy it, or to exclude others from doing these things, as well as to perhaps abandon it; whereas regardless of the nature of the property, the owner thereof has the right to properly use it (as a durable, mean or factor, or whatever), or at the very least exclusively keep it.

In economics and political economy, there are three broad forms of property: private property, public property, and collective property (also called cooperative property).

Deschutes County, Oregon

Deschutes County /dəˈʃuːts/ is a county located in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 census, the population was 157,733. The county seat is Bend. The county was created in 1916 out of part of Crook County and was named for the Deschutes River, which itself was named by French-Canadian trappers of the early 19th century. It is the political and economic hub of Central Oregon.

Deschutes comprises the Bend-Redmond, OR Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Deschutes is the fastest-growing county in Oregon.

History

French-Canadian fur trappers of the Hudson's Bay Company gave the name Riviere des Chutes (River of the Falls) to the Deschutes River, from which the county derived its name.

On December 13, 1916, Deschutes County was created from the southern part of Crook County. Bend has been the county seat since the county's formation. It was the last county in Oregon to be established.

The Shevlin-Hixon Lumber Company also operated within the Bend area processing Ponderosa pine trees.

Stephen Reed

Stephen Reed (September 26, 1801 – July 12, 1877) was an American physician, newspaper publisher, and geologist.

Reed, younger son of John and Susanna (Beach) Reed, was born in Cornwall, Conn., September 26, 1801. When ten years old, his parents removed to Canaan, Conn., from which place he came to college. He graduated from Yale College in 1824. After two or three years spent in school-teaching and in studying medicine, he established himself as a physician in Goshen, Conn. A year later he removed to Roxbury, Conn., and in 1831 to Richmond, Mass. Finding the exposure to the severity of the weather too much for his rather delicate constitution, he gave up his profession (about 1837), and opened a boarding-school for boys in Richmond, in which he proved highly successful. In 1848 he removed to Pittsfield, Mass., to take charge of an agricultural warehouse and seed store, connected with a printing office from which a weekly agricultural and miscellaneous newspaper, the Berkshire Agriculturist, was published. This paper, which he renamed The Culturist and Gazette, he continued to edit until 1858, when its publication was suspended. (The paper is noted for publishing a satirical piece by Pittsfield resident Herman Melville in 1850.) Dr. Reed afterwards sold out his share in the warehouse, and spent the rest of his life in Pittsfield, at leisure for his favorite study, geology. His name became well known in connection with geological discoveries in Western New England, mainly through his account of a long train of bowlders across part of Central Berkshire. He was also active in all the public interests of the town. He died in Pittsfield, after less than a week's illness, July 12, 1877, aged nearly 76 years.

Finance minister

A finance minister is an executive or cabinet position in charge of one or more of government finances, economic policy and financial regulation. It may also be a junior minister in the finance department, the British Treasury, for example has four junior ministers.

A finance minister's portfolio has a large variety of names across the world, such as "treasury", "finance", "financial affairs", "economy" or "economic affairs". The position of the finance minister might be named for this portfolio, but it may also have some other name, like "Treasurer" or, in the United Kingdom, "Chancellor of the Exchequer".

The duties of a finance minister differ between countries. Typically, they encompass one or more of government finance, fiscal policy, and financial regulation, but there are significant differences between countries: