Iowa looks beautiful....but then comes the taxes.... (school, live in)

[ElleTea]

Originally Posted by ION1010

My goal is to move somewhere they've never heard of "frost heaving".

What is frost heaving? Never heard of it

[Tek_Freek]

Originally Posted by ION1010

My goal is to move somewhere they've never heard of "frost heaving".

Tahiti.

[Tek_Freek]

Originally Posted by ElleTea

What is frost heaving? Never heard of it

When the ground freezes it expands. Frost heaving pushes on the road surface from underneath. In spring it thaws out. The change causes problems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_heaving

[ION1010]

Originally Posted by ElleTea

What is frost heaving? Never heard of it

Winter. Ice melts and seep down into the roadway. It freezes and expands, pushing the pavement up. Turns roads into, literally, washboards and destroys them, requiring frequent repair and replacement, thus chewing up tax dollars.

[WyoNewk]

Iowa's farm roads are also very good. Nearly all of them are "hard surface" oiled roads, and they're generally every mile, crisscrossed across the state, except for the interruption of rivers, lakes and major highways/interstates. It's been that way for more than 60 years, when my family first moved there in 1958. Being a farm family, we were impressed by all those nice roads.

[pittsflyer]

Originally Posted by 601halfdozen0theother

Taxes pay for services.

Iowa has excellent public schools and universities. Indiana (I grew up there), Tennessee, and other low tax states don't have excellent schools. Are Iowa teachers protesting their low wages and insufficient funding for their schools? No.

Those who are working to lower taxes in Iowa come from the party that has a vested interest in making sure that there are enough poorly educated people easily manipulated into voting against their own interests in order to keep the 1% rolling in the dough.

Doesnt Iowa also have a national lab attached to one of the universities. While the tax RATES are high arent the property values low compared to most places so the over all total dollars you pay out is not that high?

The income taxes would be a big deal for me, I am getting ready to apply for a flint hills job at an ethanol plant there and 9% taxes on income would hurt. If I get an offer I will have to run the net income calculator.

[pittsflyer]

Originally Posted by ION1010

Winter. Ice melts and seep down into the roadway. It freezes and expands, pushing the pavement up. Turns roads into, literally, washboards and destroys them, requiring frequent repair and replacement, thus chewing up tax dollars.

You have to dig down in the road bed further and fill with larger diameter gravel to allow void space for the water to freeze without causing upheaval. Thats what they are suppose to do in Alaska but the studs tear the roads up anyways but at least not every single year.

[M3 Mitch]

Originally Posted by WyoNewk

Iowa's farm roads are also very good. Nearly all of them are "hard surface" oiled roads, and they're generally every mile, crisscrossed across the state, except for the interruption of rivers, lakes and major highways/interstates. It's been that way for more than 60 years, when my family first moved there in 1958. Being a farm family, we were impressed by all those nice roads.

What I saw was a dirt road every mile. They were ordinary dirt roads, with a few paved roads. The short time I lived there, if I asked directions, I had to specify I didn't want to drive on dirt roads. Got some odd looks at that.



But, yeah, if you got lost in the woods, if you could manage to walk about a mile and a half at most in a reasonably straight line, you would hit a road. If you could go straight and go north, south, east, or west, you would find a road in less than a mile, a maximum of one mile if you were actually right next to one road and went straight away from it.



I was not cut out for Iowa. Great country to raise corn and hogs, if you are not going to do that, there are better locations, IMHO. Winter as cold as Idaho, with more obnoxious snow. Summer as hot and as humid as Atlanta, GA. No thank you.



In 1990 I did not find the taxes around Vinton to be particularly bad, but the state does have an income tax, I prefer the handful of states that don't.



The small towns were nice, the many small neighborhood taverns where you could get a small draught beer for like a buck, maybe tacos or other bar food.

[Pringlescan]

Originally Posted by ipkl07

Parts of Iowa are nice, but the midwest is dead. Job after job, company after company has left.

Not true at all. Iowa, Minnesota. Omaha and a few other places have some of the highest job growth rates in the country.

Originally Posted by princesspiggies

I'm with you.

Income taxes: yes, they are high. No, I don't know where they go. The governor just signed a tax reform bill that should lower rates and end federal deductibility (you deduct federal taxes paid but add to income federal refunds received - it's a pin in the you-know-what) - but I don't think it takes effect immediately.

Property taxes: insane, and again, I don't know where they go. We moved to Iowa from Virginia. We pay more than double the property tax on a similarly assessed house. The county, city, and school district all levy separate taxes - and there are one or two others on our bill.

Sales tax: 6% minimum, some higher with local rates.

Also, the difference in cost of living - especially housing - isn't what you might think.

It's exactly like you think especially to most other states.

Originally Posted by camille563

Property taxes are outrageous! It makes owning a home almost unaffordable if you want to be in a good school district! I can't wait to sell my house and go back to Atlanta suburbs!

Good school districts are a myth. They only seem better because they're new and have the money. But in reality and even statistics "good school districts" aren't better than others.

[Ziggy100]

Originally Posted by JayCT

Those income tax rates are high. I am shocked. I thought Connecticut was supposed to be bad but our maximum rate is 6.5% but that is for people making over $200,000 per year. Yours would be 5.5%. As to the property taxes, they are high on the home you posted. A similar priced home in suburban Hartford would be about the same or even a little higher taxes depending on the town plus we have the dreaded car tax which can be a couple of hundred a year more. The good thing though is we do not have counties here. Just the towns and the state. We are such a small state we do not need that extra layer of government. The state assumes all the duties that the counties do in other states so that is why when comparisons of state tax burdens are made, Connecticut always comes out near the top. We do not have a county level of government to push those duties and the taxes they require on down too. Each town provides their own school district with a few small ones pooling together to form small regional school districts. That is expensive but Connecticut has some of the best public schools in the country. As my father always said "You get what you pay for." Jay

Well, some people in Connecticut apparently get more than others. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.the...rticle/532623/
That money sure doesn’t seem to do much for their roads.