Study: Lower incomes often mean higher property taxes in N.J. (low income, sales)

[block911]

Study: Lower incomes often mean higher property taxes in N.J. | New Jersey Real-Time News - - NJ.com

[luckyshoes]

Makes sense. Cost of services don't go up just because people's incomes/home values are higher.

[brook2ga]

and higher taxes mean even less in your pocket!!

[block911]

Sooo vote corzine? vote whitman? vote baba booey?

[sholden]

Originally Posted by block911

Sooo vote corzine? vote whitman? vote baba booey?

Huh?

It's just the natural state. Costs are mostly fixed, and in fact poorer people use more government (including local government) services so costs are probably higher for poorer areas.

Also the metric is stupid. Pick any necessity, poor people will spend a higher proportion of their income on it than rich people who don't spend a chunk of their income in the first place and spend another chunk of it on luxuries.

[NatasNJ]

This article is so stupid. They are not saying lower income people have higher property taxes than higher income folk just that it eats up a larger % of their income. That is like saying touching a burning stove will burn you....

Hey if I go to Wendy's and make $100k a year and if someone else goes to Wendy's and makes $50k a year guess what? That person will spend more of their income on that meal than me. GENIUS!

[block911]

“There is no bright spot in New Jersey,” he said. “Most Americans gripe about property taxes, but New Jersey residents genuinely have a broken property tax system.”
…
There is no end in sight for the nation’s highest average annual property tax, which was $7,045 per household last year.

At the current pace, the average homeowner will see a $9,200 tax bill by 2015, $10,000 by 2017.

[BPerone201]

It's a shame what New Jersey has to burden.

[luckyshoes]

Property tax is regressive (so is sales tax), as opposed to income taxes which are progressive both at the state and federal levels.

I think that's what the article was trying to get at, but didn't do a very good job. And yeah, it kind of seems obvious.

[elflord1973]

Originally Posted by NatasNJ

This article is so stupid. They are not saying lower income people have higher property taxes than higher income folk just that it eats up a larger % of their income. That is like saying touching a burning stove will burn you....

Hey if I go to Wendy's and make $100k a year and if someone else goes to Wendy's and makes $50k a year guess what? That person will spend more of their income on that meal than me. GENIUS!

There's a difference between half-heartedly waving your hands and declaring it "obvious", versus going to the trouble to find out what the numbers really are, as the authors of the study did.

For the purpose of looking at the property tax in isolation, it may indeed be enough to observe that it is a regressive tax, and be done with it (more or less). However, when one looks at it in a wider context (e.g. how progressive the tax system is in aggregate), one needs to look more closely.

There are some factors that might make low income earners pay less -- for example, they may be more prone to selecting housing options or towns with lower property taxes. So one might wonder how much difference there is between the amount of tax someone making a 6 figure income pays, versus someone making 40k, and this article (and study) answer it (about 1.5x as much tax for 3x as much income)