The next shock for homeowners: Surging property tax assessments
cbsnews.com
cbsnews.com
I don’t have to pay yearly to keep my shirt or my beanie baby collection or play station. All the frivolous stuff is tax free
I understand you pay to be in high value areas like near major transit and cities. But there ought to be rural low demand areas where people can live without being surfs all the time
Taxes also get levied when property sale makes you profit (capital gains tax). You also charge utility fees by location and service - a flat tax on such levied at the local level.
Why should someone who's property is worth more be forced to pay a higher tax for the local school, police, etc, when they don't consume more of those services?
Obviously that wouldn't be tolerable in contemporary America, but there is still something absurd about suggesting that because some houses in my neighborhood sold for more last year, that I should have to pay thousands of dollars more for the local government.
The massive inflation in city and state budgets due to soaring property taxes is a huge abuse of the middle class and transfer of wealth to the pork barrel of connected insiders profiting from government contracts, grants, etc.
> I understand you pay to be in high value areas like near major transit and cities. But there ought to be rural low demand areas where people can live without being surfs all the time
enter stage left: land value tax
a land tax is not recoup-able via higher rent. If the rent could be raised, the landlord has no reason not to raise it, so it makes sense that the rent is the maximum the market bears.
> Shareholders and gold hoarders pay too
they don't pay a % tax of the value of their holdings as tax annually. They pay only after they sell, and make a capital gains.
If you live in the middle of unincorporated land in the boonies, then property taxes are truly unjust, because what you pay via income, gasoline and other consumption taxes should cover the things you use.
Gov is literally controlling supply (planning, permits, inspections) and demand (immigration, interest rates).
Whats even more ironic is social housing tends to not be built to the building code or maintained to safe level aka gov fails their own regulation.
Where I’m at gov makes you pay for future infrastructure like drainage they might install someday even if you make your own system!
I think you need to balance you view on what type of ownership this is. You own the land like a child living with their parents “own” their room. The government has allowed you to be the owner of the land yes, but you haven’t paid money to have them hand over their claim to the land fully to you. Your claim to the land is only secondary to your countries claim, and even when living on your land you are still within the country.
Your idea that you should pay nothing would have you not only paying the previous “owner” but also paying the country enough money to have them recognize your piece of land as a sovereign nation owned by you, and that sort of thing would have a cost that’s astronomical compared to just transferring the state recognized ownership between individuals.
We get a city utilities bill, but its itemization shows trash, recycling, and water, but does not show police, fire department, road maintenance, which is lumped inside property tax.
seems really illogical to me too.
Reporters that conflate assessments with taxes raised are lacking basic numeracy.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJp5q-R0lZ0_FCUbeVWK6...
Don't judge lest ye be judged yourself. We do not know personally how all the housing conditions looked like in the 50's, and a lot of mundane facts weren't interesting enough to make it to history books.
We may actually be making similar decisions right now, unaware of their future ramifications that will bite our descendants in 2100.
Personally, I grew up in a block of flats, lived in blocks of flats my entire life, and I yearn for a bit of a garden. In autumn, I am moving to a terrace house that has a bit of garden. It is close to public transport and not isolated in the middle of nowhere - things are different in Europe in this regard - but still lower density than technocrats probably consider optimal.
But I am really tired of 44 years of hearing shouting, fighting, abuse, drinking, puking and all sorts of mayhem from all directions. My new home won't be a tranquil paradise, but it will likely be an improvement for my nerves.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_...
(Serious question.)
Everything is expensive because housing supply is artificially constrained.
So, typically the tax authorities will asses your home value one year and increase that, then your land value the next year and increase that, and the switch back to the home value for the third year, and just keep switching back and forth, and meanwhile pushing against that 10% limit as hard as they can every year.
But you do have to make sure that you get that "homestead" declaration filed correctly.
There are a number of ambulance-chaser type law firms in Texas that specialize in fighting tax assessments that increase by too much, and many of them work by taking the deal for free and then they'll split the savings with you if they win. Be careful who you choose in this space.
My tax rates seem essentially fraudulent and designed to bleed me dry. My comparisons include houses twice as large, in better school districts, with views, with pools, etc. The firms who help protect me from getting robbed by this bureaucratic exploitation are more akin to an honorable defense attorney protecting a wrongfully accused victim.
And of course, the whole notion of increasing property taxes is absurd. The government budget for next year should be roughly the same as this year. If house prices went up 10% that doesn't mean that the entire state government budget went up 10%.
Yes, they perform a service, and I'm sure some of them are appreciated by some of their clients -- just like ambulance chasers.
My wife also happens to be a lawyer, and her opinion of them is lower than mine.
I honestly don't know what you're getting out outside of snide political commentary.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/us/california-budget-surp...
As an outside observer into the Wild West that is California real estate, part of me wants to see Prop 13 repealed just to see what would happen. Personally, I think the only thing that would change would be property tax valuations as I believe that the effect it's had on building houses is virtually nil.
It is impossible to defend these programs, and also complain about inequality, rich not paying their "fair share", whatever. Anyone who does so -- Bernie, E. Warren -- is a hypocrite.
This is especially true/important when property values crash, as they do every 10 years or so. (It's starting now as people start to realize that mortgages are going up from 5%, not down.)
Why? Because all of the people who bought more than a couple of years ago will see their regular 2% increase because the crash didn't hit their property's value. Meanwhile, newer homeowners will go to the assessor and get a reduction in value, which reduces their taxes. The former outweighs the latter.
That's what capital gains taxation captures.