There's an old country saying about choosing a practical site for a house: "You can't eat the view."

Maybe not, but in New Hampshire, it appears that the government has figured out how to tax it.

The Associated Press ran a story on October 31 about a township in New Hampshire that is raising the property assessments on houses that have attractive views. I'm still not sure it wasn't a Halloween hoax.

State officials insist that there is no "view tax" -- local authorities have always taken account of the view in assessing the overall value of a dwelling. The only change is that views in some of the prettier parts of the state have become so valuable that in some towns, assessors have begun listing the view as a separate item on the records.

The townships, for their part, say that if these tax increases are a bit arbitrary, taxpayers shouldn't fret. Greater regularity will come when the state legislature comes up with "objective standards" for valuing views. (I can't wait to read that particular statute. "I think that I shall never see/A tax boost lovely as a tree.")

Critics of the view tax have pointed out that higher taxes are forcing family farms to sell out to developers -- which should do a lot towards diminishing the value of views in New Hampshire. ("Little boxes, made of ticky-tacky...")

But perhaps there's an alternative. If you walk around some of the older parts of London today, you will occasionally see an 18th Century house with several of its widows bricked up. That is the legacy of a time when the British government taxed windows. Maybe the New Hampshire legislature will grant some property tax relief to hard-pressed homeowners who brick up their windows so they can't see the view.

I wouldn't bet on it. In the immortal words of John Randolph of Roanoke: "No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session."