patrick.net

if its NY metro area, expect it to get much worse. The governor recently came out and said that NYS is out of cash.

Living in Utah, my taxes just increased to $1010.00 per year. Total amount. Utah - Pro: low taxes & cost of living); Con - harder to buy alcohol...

"Perhaps its time to move out of such a high tax area."

Perhaps its time to move out your government representatives. Make them take a walk.

Although the mortgage wouldn’t be that bad, the taxes simply put home-ownership that much more out of reach as they add almost 40% to the monthly payment, depending on the terms of the morgatge.

Houses are bid up to the price we can afford. Property taxes are actually a good thing in that they tax a pure surplus. You'd be paying $x,000 per month regardless of the property tax rate!!!

Ideally, we'd tax land area and location value first and the actual improvements only to the extent that they harm the use of neighboring properties.

This is the Single Tax idea from over 100 years ago.

Is that really a separate school tax on top of property taxes?! WOW!

The property tax part sounds comparable to Portland metro, Oregon but we have no sales tax and our tax income tax is 9%

Leigh says

Is that really a separate school tax on top of property taxes?! WOW!

Keeps the old people with no kids from hogging the houses close to the good schools, LOL.

Troy says

Houses are bid up to the price we can afford. Property taxes are actually a good thing in that they tax a pure surplus. You’d be paying $x,000 per month regardless of the property tax rate!!!

I think Troy is right. If the tax were not there, the house price would be more, and then you'd pay about the same anyway in the mortgage (or in lost use of capital if the house is paid off).

Here in NH there is a direct correlation between the price of property and the price of taxes. If your house is 200,000 on one side of the line and 300,000 on the other side of the line, your taxes are the same BUT the per thousand tax rate is lower in the more expensive community. For a long time every homeowner wanted to live in Bedford NH. Now, since they built an expensive highscool their taxes have doubled and people are fleeing the town, prices dropped 20-30% and that was before the bubble pop. A 700k home was around 8k in taxes, now closer to 14k!.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

The funny thing is that if the local & county gov't is spending its tax revenues wisely they'll ALL show up in increased home values (and thus rents). This is the greatest handout to LLs where the burden on property taxes is the lowest. Prop 13 on rental SFH/condo properties is the biggest ongoing ripoff I can think of.

Congratulations, voters of California!

Encourage productive work, not living off interest.

Well, there's good interest (capital returns) and then there's naked rentierism.

"Investing" in existing housing stock does nothing to create added community wealth and as such is purely parasitical in nature. If I were King I'd tax this business model to break it. 20% of sales in California right now are to cash buyers. What an ongoing evil we allow.

How about replacing property tax with a community charge?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Charge

This way, there is no need to estimate the value of a house.

How come they can charge such ridiculous amount of school tax which is way higher than property tax?

If people in the area had to give up like 10% of their yearly net income for schools, they would expect their schools to be the finest in the country. Are they really are? If not, what the heck they are doing with the money? Paying off the national debts? lol.

Troy says

Leigh says

Is that really a separate school tax on top of property taxes?! WOW!

Keeps the old people with no kids from hogging the houses close to the good schools, LOL.

I think its actually a good idea. Regardless of the house value, they should pay school tax. While prop 13 can be applied to property tax, this is a great way of spending more for already broken CA schools.

There should be no school tax. Instead, there should be school fees.

The best way to fix broken public schools is to do away with them.

^ thank you Captain Libertarian

Peter P says

There should be no school tax. Instead, there should be school fees.
The best way to fix broken public schools is to do away with them.

Public schools aren't the problem, its expecting public employees to raise the children of retarded parents.

Public schools cost less than private day care.

Public schools aren’t the problem, its expecting public employees to raise the children of retarded parents.

So schools should be private and education should be optional. Teachers and principals should be able to reject or expel any student for any reason.

mm, from school directly to prison. Perhaps Wackenhut can run both, or we could throw poor people's children into prison-schools to reduce damage to the public weal.

http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm