How much and how quickly do taxes go up? (New York: sales, vehicle registration)

[TrudiRose]

Another question from someone looking to move to LI:

I know property taxes are high and that they go up - but how FAST do they go up? If I look at a house with, say, $7,000 in taxes, and I'm budgeting for that, what am I looking at the following year and the year after? Is it something totally insane, like $1,000 a year increase every year? Or does it stay the same for a few years, then suddenly shoot up? Or does it go up a few hundred every year?

What's been your experience?

[budsvtec]

We bought our house in 2005, and my taxes were $7559. Now in 2007, my taxes are $8400. We didnt do any expansions. We have a 60X100 property in Levittown.

[4StanleyCups]

In Suffolk County, a big chunk (from 60%-65%) of the total property tax bill is the school taxes. Therefore, if your school district budget (which is voted on each May) includes a whopping increase and the budget passes, then you will see a corresponding increase in your next property tax bill (tax bills are generated every December).

When I bought this house in 2003, my total property taxes were (without STAR) about $11,000. My last tax bill (Dec 2006) has total pre-STAR taxes of more than $17,000. The great majority of the increase, which you can see has averaged about $1000/yr, came from school budgets which were proposed and passed. In reality there were at least 2 years where the increase was more than $1000 and the others were less. That's because in certain years the school budget increase was in double digits. In other years, single digits. I have done nothing to my house physically to increase the taxes, btw.

If you end up in a spendaholic school district, good luck......

[TheSeventhBrady]

We started at $4,800 in 1995, and shot up to $5,100 the following year. It turned out the previous owner had a veteran's exemption, which we were not aware of. Live and learn.

Today, we're at $8,900 -- also on a 60x100 lot.

[NY62]

[quote=4StanleyCups;1257057]In Suffolk County, a big chunk (from 60%-65%) of the total property tax bill is the school taxes. Therefore, if your school district budget (which is voted on each May) includes a whopping increase and the budget passes, then you will see a corresponding increase in your next property tax bill (tax bills are generated every December).

When I bought this house in 2003, my total property taxes were (without STAR) about $11,000. My last tax bill (Dec 2006) has total pre-STAR taxes of more than $17,000. The great majority of the increase, which you can see has averaged about $1000/yr, came from school budgets which were proposed and passed. In reality there were at least 2 years where the increase was more than $1000 and the others were less. That's because in certain years the school budget increase was in double digits. In other years, single digits. I have done nothing to my house physically to increase the taxes, btw.


If you end up in a spendaholic school district, good luck...... [/QUOTE

I agree totaly school taxes are the killer

[nancy thereader]

When you try to explain the taxes here to people who live in other states , they are incredulous. My brother lives on three beautiful acres in Colorado in a lovely 3/4 million $ home and pays.....are you ready ????? $1.650. THAT is the norm of this country. We are the aberration here & our schools are really not that much better . Neither are any of our services. It really is very unfair & there is not a thing that we can do about it . Many people pay as much as $15,000 a year in Babylon Village in houses which are little more than expanded bungalows.

[4StanleyCups]

Why are the taxes here so high? Because of the school taxes. Why are the school taxes here so high? In my opinion, four main reasons:

1. the power of the teachers' unions
2. the unwillingness of school districts to fight the unions on contract issues (gawdforbid the teachers go on strike)
3. certain NY State mandated but not state-funded programs (this is one of the reasons districts always trot out for the yearly increases; whether it is that big a percentage is another question)
4. the current system in which each school district is a separate taxing entity, and negotiates its own contract with the teachers' union, rather than having a single county-wide school district.

Other, more minor reasons:

5. The cost of health insurance for teachers and administrators is another reason that gets trumpeted by the districts for big increases. Well yes, we taxpayers are not surprised that the cost of the district's policy jumps every year -- SO DO OURS. And admittedly, health insurance as a whole (for private individuals and businesses) is generally higher in NY, NJ, CT etc than in many other states. But that's an across-the-board effect, it doesn't target school districts in particular. Everybody in the Northeast gets hit with it.

6. Some districts (Roslyn comes immediate to mind, and of course there are others) have or have had corruption within. The state only audits what, 2% of its school districts per year, on average? Yes I know each district has a so-called independent auditor. Well, so did Roslyn, supposedly.

I'd be curious to see what portion of the $1650/yr Colorado tax bill goes for school taxes, and also what kind of system they have in place for it. Is it like ours, with separate independent districts? Or is it central, handled on a wider basis, maybe per-county? How strong are the teachers' unions out there, compared to ours? Without knowing the details it is hard to compare the two areas....

[4StanleyCups]

Okay, I did a little internet digging and found out this info about how public schools are funded in Colorado:

"Colorado public schools receive funding from a variety of sources. However, most revenues to Colorado's 178 school districts are provided through the Public School Finance Act of 1994 (as amended). In budget year 2006-07, this legislation provides for over $4.7 billion of funding to Colorado school districts via state taxes ($3.04 billion), local specific ownership (vehicle registration) taxes ($170.6 million), and local property taxes ($1.57 billion)."

Hmmmm, lookee there: Colorado statewide taxes provide almost TWICE the amount of public school funding as local property taxes do. And vehicle registration taxes kick in a bit of $$ as well. So the burden of supporting the public schools is not borne solely by the homeowner, as is the case here on LI.

Here's something else interesting about education funding in Colorado:

"Each school district's annual revenue and spending growth is limited by its percentage of growth in pupil enrollment plus the rate (percentage) of inflation, in accordance with the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights (TABOR) state constitutional amendment."

A taxpayer's bill of rights.... would that we had something like that in NY State, but alas.... we don't.

Also, school districts/funding in Colorado is on a county-wide basis, unlike Long Island's system.

Now let's take a look at how schools are funded in NY State (this is taken directly from a NYS website, http://osc.state.ny.us/localgov/pubs...pertytaxes.pdf)

"Property taxes are the only significant source of revenue for most school districts. A relatively small number of districts receive sales tax distributions or impose a consumer utility tax, and of course New York City is an exception - being funded by a municipal tax base which includes personal income, sales and other taxes."

So there it is in black and white. When people cite low property taxes in other states compared to those on Long Island, and fail to also note the differences in how schools are funded in those other states, the comparison becomes totally useless. Taking Colorado as an example, where a huge chunk of the school funding come from taxes that everybody in the state of Colorado pays .... not just the homeowners who happen to live in the local school areas, but everybody in Colorado is kicking money into the education pot! No wonder the property taxes are lower. They would be lower on LI too, if money from every taxpayer in NY State was distributed among the LI schools instead of having the homeowners in each greedy district bearing the entire school funding burden.

[clamboy]

Originally Posted by nancy thereader

Thanks, that was a great post w/ all that information. I also believe that the high (over $100k) teachers' salaries have a lot to do with the taxes. And, I am almost certain that cops in other areas do not earn over $90,000 after five or six years.

I guess the argument would be that you have to pay cops and teachers enough to live here.

Unfortunately it's generally at the expense of folks who have no pension at all and make far less per year than they do.

My wife is a teacher in Suffolk....they start at 40k with a Masters.
She makes more money waiting tables in the summer.

As for cops making 90k with a GED to dodge a donut,thats complete BS.

Those greedy bastards should at very least be held to a Bachelors degree for that kind of money.
Clearly we're not getting Long Islands best and brightest joining the force.
(Especially when the cops in NY make NOTHING.)

Protect and Serve... my ass.
Tax and Spend is more like it.

I hate it here.
Its so very,very broken.

Like I said before....

Millionaires,Migrant Workers and Cops by 2020.

Note the foreshadowing.

C

[clamboy]

Originally Posted by 4StanleyCups

In Suffolk County, a big chunk (from 60%-65%) of the total property tax bill is the school taxes. Therefore, if your school district budget (which is voted on each May) includes a whopping increase and the budget passes, then you will see a corresponding increase in your next property tax bill (tax bills are generated every December).

When I bought this house in 2003, my total property taxes were (without STAR) about $11,000. My last tax bill (Dec 2006) has total pre-STAR taxes of more than $17,000. The great majority of the increase, which you can see has averaged about $1000/yr, came from school budgets which were proposed and passed. In reality there were at least 2 years where the increase was more than $1000 and the others were less. That's because in certain years the school budget increase was in double digits. In other years, single digits. I have done nothing to my house physically to increase the taxes, btw.

If you end up in a spendaholic school district, good luck......

Thats Hideous 4stan