There are ongoing calls the fix the property tax system, but it's time to do more than just tinker.

The national financial meltdown has brought into sharp relief the fact that property assessments based on anything but what someone actually paid for a house are sheer fantasy, making any tax based on them fraudulent.

This comes up because of news reports that some Utah legislators are reaching the end of their patience with the property tax system. Lawmakers are reportedly grumbling that the system should be fixed -- and it should be, in a big way. They are hearing the anger of homeowners who have been stunned by how their home "value" skyrocketed from about 2002 to 2007, then went in the dumper.

The assessment process invariably brings complaints. It's based on somebody's guess as to what a buyer might pay for a property. Virtually no other investment is subject to tax until it is sold. When that happens, capital gains and losses can be accurately assessed, and may be properly taxed.

By parallel, if you invest in gold and the price of gold goes up, you hold a more valuable investment on paper, but you don't actually realize any gain until the moment you sell. That is the right moment for taxes.

Homeowners often feel blindsided by assessed valuations. Some counties reassess only every few years; a few update assessments only once a decade. It's not unusual for a homeowner to experience "sticker shock."

This is wrong at its core. A person buys a house on the basis of a specific income stream that will pay for it. Raising the tax on a property whose owner bought it 20 years ago and hasn't moved therefore amounts to pure theft. There is no cash asset from which to draw the increase. The value is on paper only, since the property hasn't sold, but the cost is real -- straight out of pocket.

The process has been especially painful in recent years as the prices of homes soared. Modest houses were transformed into mansions -- at least according to tax assessors. Homeowners found themselves paying higher taxes on structures that were otherwise unchanged.

The same happened all across the U.S. Then -- pop! The housing bubble burst. Across the nation, trillions of dollars in property value "vanished." If this doesn't prove conclusively that "value" is an illusion, nothing can. Real value can only be measured at points of sale.

The value illusion is one that sometimes confuses even financial experts. For any real estate that wasn't sold at the peak, the supposed wealth never existed. It was a dream on paper designed to serve the interest of a tax collector.

Now reality has dawned. Prices are slumping. A new federal report says Utah home prices fell 1.6 percent in the third quarter, compared to the same period last year. It's obvious that the old assessed values were way overblown -- phantoms of the housing hysteria.

So far no taxing body in our area (or anywhere else) has stepped forward to return taxes paid on the illusory rise in home value from 2002-2007. And none ever will.

Even if property taxes, generally speaking, were a fair way to tax -- which they decidedly are not -- it is plain that home prices gyrate far too much for estimates of market value to be a reliable measure of wealth or taxes owed.

So let's not get too excited over minor tweaks to improve the assessment system. It doesn't matter if the county reassesses property every decade or every day. It doesn't matter what methods it uses, whether it tries to find "fair market value" or anything else.

A house isn't worth anything until somebody buys it. And the price is the undisputed value, to the penny.

Property assessment is a sham. It's like a novel that may incorporate historical figures and events but nonetheless is pure fiction.

The financial meltdown has exposed the many lies and delusions of our national life -- and the property tax is one of them. Now that the scales have fallen from our eyes, it's time to seriously consider whether the property tax should be junked, and better forms of taxation installed to take its place.