Ever since two park rangers approached me at an empty public court while I was teaching my own children tennis, I’ve been thinking about how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Not just to me. To anybody.
The problem that afternoon wasn’t that the rangers were doing their jobs. The problem was information. They had no idea who I was, what I contribute, or whether the two kids I was feeding forehands to were mine. So they had to guess, and their guess involved disrupting a perfectly lovely afternoon.
We can fix this with better data. My proposal is a tax identification system, which follows my Leash Ratio to help you determine how much you should be willing to work. Because here at Financial Samurai, since 2009, we’re all about finding solutions to problems so that everyone can benefit.
How My Tax Identification System Would Work
Every citizen receives a tax classification tied to their contribution, the way you already have a Social Security number. To make the classification visible in public spaces, you wear it. A colored cap for casual outings, a colored outer jacket for colder days.
I know how this sounds. My first thought was armbands, and then I remembered why we don’t do armbands. So let’s be modern about it. A hat is voluntary in the way a lanyard at a conference is voluntary. Nobody’s forcing you. You just can’t get into the session without it.
Say I’m wearing a gold cap indicating I pay property taxes. The rangers see gold from thirty feet away and keep walking. Say I’m wearing blue, indicating I don’t. They approach with a scanner that reads your individualized barcode, because caps are easy to counterfeit and the whole system collapses if anyone can just buy gold on Amazon.
At minimum, the scanner produces a better opening line. “Excuse us for bothering you” instead of “do you have a permit to teach.” That’s not nothing. That’s the entire difference between a nice Tuesday and a bad one.
And really, how hard would this be? We already carry government-issued ID. We already hand our license to authorities who asks. We’re most of the way there. All we’re adding is color and apparel if you so choose to identify in public.
Now Make The Tax ID System Backwards – Pay More, Get Less
Here’s where my proposal departs from what you’re expecting.
The system should reward the people who pay the least.
Think it through. If you pay $60,000 a year in property taxes, you have demonstrated the capacity to pay for things. That’s what a tax bill is. It’s a receipt proving you had the money.
Public tennis courts exist for people who don’t have the money and value convenience. Asking a high-taxpayer to use a public court is like asking someone with a car in the garage to take a seat on a crowded bus. Technically permitted. Socially inefficient.
So the gold cap for property tax payers shouldn’t get you deference. It should get you out of the way.
If you pay property taxes, the assumption is you’ve benefited from economic growth. San Francisco real estate has been in a perpetual frenzy zone since the AI boom started in 2023, which means homeowners have likely built more wealth than renters through no particular effort of their own.
The rational policy response is to nudge those homeowners toward private clubs and private schools, freeing up the public courts and the public classrooms for families who can’t or won’t write that check. Meanwhile, perhaps there will be less hate towards homeowners by renters as well.
You pay more, you get less. That’s not a bug. That’s the point of the whole thing.
San Francisco already has precedent for doing the opposite of what seems logical. We release repeat offenders again and again until something genuinely tragic happens. We permitted government graft for years until we finally said enough on November 7, 2024.
Against that backdrop, reducing the benefits available to taxpayers so that non-taxpayers get priority is barely a policy innovation. It’s just the way things are.
Keep It Simple: Gold And Blue
For any of this to work it has to be simple enough to enforce at a glance. So forget granular tax brackets and all the different types of taxes we pay. Two classes.
Homeowners wear gold. Renters, who indirectly pay property taxes, wear blue. Every hat contains a specific barcode that brings up your picture and name on a scanner, just like when you go through a ski turnstile.
Blue renters gets priority on every public court, field, and pool in the city. If a homeowner family is next in line and a blue cap walks up, blue plays first. It’s like a Lightning Lane at an amusement park, except instead of paying extra you qualify by paying less.
About 63% of San Franciscans rent. This thing passes on the first ballot as minorities seldom ever get their way. I know because I’ve lived as one since coming to America in 1995 for high school. It’s not so bad as you learn to adapt and survive.
Renters get more court time. Homeowners buy club memberships so they can be treated with dignity again. Everybody wins.
I gave up cable and my sports club membership recently to cut costs as oil prices and interest rates stay elevated. If this proposal passes, it looks like I’m rejoining. Because at the end of the day, I believe it’s important to be consistent with thought and action.
The Part That Isn’t Dystopian
In 2025 I sold my previous primary residence and cut my property tax bill by ~$37,000. As a writer with a stay-at-home spouse and two young kids, that relief mattered.
Writers don’t make much. As proof, I recently wrote about a 37-year-old New York Times bestselling author whose father still pays for their childcare and housing. She even has a husband and they still can’t afford the basics on their own.
I’ve lived in San Francisco since 2001. Twenty-five years, no incidents. Then I lower my property tax contribution, and within a year I’m being asked to explain who the children next to me belong to.
Probably a coincidence. Maybe not with all the government monitoring technology.
Fight Or Flight Is A Real Response As A Parent
Finally, here’s an important point. If you’ve never had an encounter with law enforcement, you don’t know what your body does. Mine went straight to fight or flight.
My first instinct was to defend, because two little ones were standing behind me and every part of me wanted to put myself between them and whatever this was. At the same time, some other part of my brain was running the arithmetic that a lot of people in this country run automatically, which is that resisting has ended very badly for some folks.
You get better at it. That’s the one mercy. The second time is easier than the first, which is why going through a fist fight can be highly beneficial for your nervous system. You only have a split second to act.
So from now on I’ll bring photocopies of my children’s birth certificates in my tennis bag, next to the spare grips. We’ve practiced what they say if someone approaches us. Their names. My name. That I’m their dad. We’ve practiced saying it calmly, and smiling, and being polite even when the other person isn’t.
And we’ve practiced the last one, if worse comes to worst. Hands up. Don’t shoot. We mean no harm.
They’re six and nine. They thought it was a game. I let them think that. But life comes quick, and the sooner they know it, the better prepared they’ll be.
Readers, do you think a tax identification system would make public interactions more civil, or is the whole concept an obvious disaster waiting to happen? If you pay more in taxes, should you get more access to public services, less access, or should the amount you pay have nothing to do with it at all? For those of you with kids, at what age did you start preparing them for how to handle an encounter with police, or have you not had that conversation yet?
Protect The People Who Are Counting On You
That afternoon at the park reminded me that I’m the one standing between my kids and whatever shows up. It’s a good feeling right up until you consider what happens if you’re not there.
If you have children and a spouse who depends on your income, term life insurance is the cheapest peace of mind you’ll ever buy. I locked in a policy before my second child was born and it costs less per month than my old sports club membership, the one I gave up to save money and now might have to rejoin thanks to my own proposed hat system.
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