Similar to the way deductions are enforced on income tax, i.e. self-reporting and it is a crime to lie about it (essentially the same way that mortgage interest on primary residence is deducted, etc).

Coupled with the fact that you can only have one primary residence at a time.

Won't be perfect, but I'm not sure it needs to be.

Occasional random door-to-door checks? (Miss too many, and you lose your local-resident exemption.)

I'm sure voters would vote for that.

Any additional property tax in any city in the state of California has to go before a vote of the affected property owners per Prop. 218, passed in 1996. God bless our direct democracy system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_218_(199...

If it lowers voters' taxes, but increases costs on faraway non-residents/non-voters... isn't that exactly what voters like?

Also, the Legislative Analyst's Office says Prop 218/1996 doesn't affect property taxes, but rather other kinds of property fees. See http://www.lao.ca.gov/1996/120196_prop_218/understanding_pro... – especially figure 2.

Clearly, fixes are going to have to unwind previous statewide and local law... which means convincing people of the causes and solutions, over time. It took decades to enact the bad policies; it'll take many election cycles to chip away at them as well.

A land value tax isn't a property tax, so no problem there.