Saturday, October 02, 2010
Property taxes and politics
Feel my pain: New Jersey leads the country in property taxes. Note the interesting division between "blue" and "red" states among the most and least heavily taxed.
May Governor Awesome eventually make enough progress to knock the Garden State down this dubious list.
7 Comments:
By 
SR, at
Sat Oct 02, 02:53:00 PM:
It is an artifact of California's Prop 13, without which, we would surely lead the nation (if not because of earlier bankruptcy the state had been ceded back to Mexico some years ago).
By 
, at
Sat Oct 02, 03:16:00 PM:
I lived in New Hampshire for 10 years. Our property taxes were high, but there were NO personal income taxes. Now I live in New Jersey. What was I thinking?
By Dawnfire82, at
Sat Oct 02, 04:15:00 PM:
Texas is #12, but there is no income tax there either. Property taxes are typically used to pay local bills while the state operates largely on sales tax and fees.
By , at
Sat Oct 02, 04:24:00 PM:
It's not as if Prop 13 reduced the tax burden in California by a single dollar. All single-issue tax revolts are pointless so long as every other tax the government can think of and levy can be raised to compensate.
By , at
Sun Oct 03, 09:14:00 AM:
The table presented at the other end of the link would be more interesting if the data were normalized for the size of the property being taxed or for the market value of the property being taxed. These normalized data are available at the other end of links at the head of the article at the other end of TigerHawk's link.
Withal, it's a pretty clear dichotomy between the liberal's view of who should have control over our money compared to a conservative's view.
Eric Hines
By JPMcT, at
Sun Oct 03, 02:24:00 PM:
Virginia is a refuge for Yankee retirees who can no longer afford to live in their homes after they stop working. State Income tax around 5.75% and urban (worst case) property taxes at about 1.45% of assessed value. We had a budget durplus this year.
What we lack are Democrats in charge...and it shows!
By Stack Trace, at
Mon Oct 04, 11:35:00 AM:
So I get why crazy-high property taxes are Bad. But look at the other end of that list. Many states that have extremely low property tax rates *also* rank very poorly in some important ways, such as economic development and education rankings. Louisiana often comes in dead last in education rankings. And look at Texas -- ranked #12 at 1.81%, but still kickin' butt economically, and run largely by Republicans.
Unconstrained, unaccountable taxation is evil. But, like it or not, taxes are how we fund some important stuff. The amount of taxation is important, but even more important is what is done with those taxes.
