Boston recently reassessed its properties citywide. Values in a number of neighborhoods rose dramatically and so, when tax bills arrived, property taxes had also risen dramatically. The rapid increases pose problems for both small businesses and homeowners.

Take small businesses as an example. Economists like to laud small business as the engine of economic growth (every large business, remember, once started small). They are a source of innovation and competition and, within the city of Boston, provide a real source of economic diversity as well.

But small businesses almost by definition operate on the thinnest of margins. Unlike chain stores, which have vast resources of capital and expertise, small businesses are thinly capitalized and their managers are typically also their owners. They are particularly subject to fluctuations in sales. A few snowy days during a prime shopping season can often spell the difference between economic life and death for small business operators.

Changes in costs can also wreak havoc. In Beacon Hill and Back Bay, for example, some commercial building values have virtually doubled. When those values double, property taxes double as well. Thus, a shopkeeper in a building once valued at $500,000 will see his taxes rise from $20,750 to $41,500 when the building's assessment doubles. Yet nothing has changed for the underlying business:  sales haven't gone up, other costs haven't gone down. For a small business where the margin is sometimes little more than $25,000 or $50,000 a year, increases like these mean potential layoffs or even closing the store altogether.

And the problem isn't confined to those two areas. Charlestown and Dudley Square have also seen values rise, as have other Boston neighborhoods.

This phenomenon relates to one inherent flaw with property taxes. Unlike income taxes or sales taxes, which increase or decrease depending upon a business's own success or failure, property taxes rise or fail depending upon the appreciation or depreciation of an asset that usually is not income producing.

On its face, it seems unreasonable to impose dramatic property tax increases on anyone. Businesses value stability in their costs and sales, and one goal of city tax policy should be to keep taxes as predictable and steady as possible. The same holds true with residential property. Although the residential rate is much lower than the business rate ($13.73 versus a business rate of $41.50 per $1,000), few homeowners are in a position to make significantly larger payments immediately.

What's the solution? One approach is to use the Proposition 2½ framework.

Proposition 2½, as tax addicts may remember, limits property tax increases to 2.5 percent annually. But that limit only applies citywide, not to any individual property. Perhaps its time to consider imposing some tax increase limits on individual properties as well. The limits would not have to be as low as 2.5 percent — a 10 percent limit would probably do the trick.

Doing so will require changes to state law and those won't be easy to accomplish. But it's certainly better than forcing businesses to close or driving residents from their homes.