Boy am I glad I don't live in MoCo! (Arlington: schools, property tax)

[snowdenscold]

Originally Posted by tysonsengineer

PS all you Maryland is a socialist tax raising maniacal land, if you actually looked at the rates

Moco is being raised to $0.991 per 100
Fairfax is also being raised btw to $1.075 (from 1.07) per 100
Loudoun is $1.285 per 100

Strange that the more republican controlled an area is, the more its taxes are.

Well, real estate taxes are just one part of it. There's also income and sales taxes (and the aforementioned gas taxes - but I imagine those are relatively smaller compared to the big 3). Counties in Maryland add additional income tax to the state rate (I think MoCo is something crazy like 3.2%), even though it's taken out as one item.

[tysonsengineer]

Originally Posted by snowdenscold

Well, real estate taxes are just one part of it. There's also income and sales taxes (and the aforementioned gas taxes - but I imagine those are relatively smaller compared to the big 3). Counties in Maryland add additional income tax to the state rate (I think MoCo is something crazy like 3.2%), even though it's taken out as one item.

From what I am reading thats not how it works,

WaPo says WapoStory
That the energy tax and sales tax are both Maryland taxes as a whole. And the reason why MoCo people are upset is because it disproportionately hurts richer households in MoCo, which as you say typically make over 150k per household.

Regardless, us virginians also pay fuel taxes, but unlike the maryland structure, our funds go to the state and then the state decides how much each area gets back. We end up only get back 1/5 of what we send out, thereby creating a 5x greater effective tax rate for us northern virginians. I would rather be charge 3 extra cents per gallon of gas, if it meant that the over billion dollars would stay in our region ONLY instead of subsidizing lower tax regions of Virginia.

Regardless, a change of .5% on a sales tax accounts to 75 dollars per person per year on average. The difference between a 99 cent (MoCo RE tax) and 1.08 (Fairfax RE Tax) tax rate (.09 per 100) is actually $540 difference per household on average (based on 500k typical assessed value in FFX and MoCo).

Order of magnitude difference in the importance of Real Estate Tax and Sales Tax

[snowdenscold]

You're right, sales tax per year is a lot less than property tax and income tax, but my main point was that the latter is a significant factor when comparing "taxes" in general between FFX and MoCo.

Maryland by itself might only have a 4.75% rate (or 5% if you make 150K single or 200K joint filing), but add on MoCo's 3.2% on top of that, and you're looking at a 2.2% increase over living here (whether in Loudoun or Fairfax). Even if your household only made 100K, that's still 2200 - much higher than the real estate difference for FFX (though only a little higher for Loudoun). But again, that's assuming 100K for a household - half the households here are above that.

[tysonsengineer]

Ok now I am following your argument since I found this

Maryland State Income Tax Rates Means that MoCo has a (4.75 + 3.2) 7.95% income tax rate for most residents. By comparison Virginia state income tax is a flat 5.75 for everyone (basically except for 17k earners and lower).

The benefit I would argue vs the Fairfax method is that our income tax all goes to the state, who again (like the gas tax) returns far less than what we provide back to us. In Moco, the amount they give the state as a whole, which rarely comes back to them as well, is less than the amount we do. When they take the 3.2% though they actually can address their own counties needs.

Frankly, and I know this will draw some people's ire, but if it means we can get real solutions for Fairfax, and not beg the state for 20% of our own money, I would be for a .5% additional income tax that would go towards Fairfax infrastructure only. That would be an extra 500 bucks per household, 41 bucks per month (about 200 million dollars aggregate) btw. The benefit would be actual improvements to the ease of our lives.

Unfortunately not allowed by the state of virginia. Best case scenario would be to just be able to get our money back to us, but good luck prying nova's liberal money out of the cold dead hands of the Richmond GOP.

[yolli71]

I agree with one thing you say...I hate Richmond politics and how the rest of VA seems to stick it to NoVA. That being said, I don't believe it's as simple as how you describe it. You cannot convince me that people in MoCo pay more but have it so much better than us b/c more of their money goes to their own county. They do not have better schools, better traffic, better jobs, etc., than NoVA does. If what you say is actually true about their supposed superior infrastructure, then MoCo does a really poor job of relaying this message to its residents....b/c I can tell you right now...their residents complain about taxes and quality of life more than I ever hear over here. My wife, who was born in MoCo and later worked and owned a home in MoCo, tells me there is no comparison...living in NoVA is significantly better than MoCo (I won't get into all the reasons why...there are too many to list and it doesn't pertain to this thread).

I'll tell you what MoCo taxes go towards....I was talking to a co-worker today who's a homeowner in Germantown...he bought his townhouse for 500k in an upscale community yet was complaining about the number of neighbors who basically got their townhomes for free through the subsidized housing program that's so prevalent in MoCo.

As I mentioned earlier, my wife [and in-laws] are from MoCo and I also work in MoCo...I don't care how you try to spin it...there's no way I can be convinced that their higher taxes create a better standard of living than what we have here in NoVA.

[ACWhite]

Tysonsengineer, a key reason that recent real estate tax rates are relatively low is that the assessed values skyrocketed during the bubble (and in some areas such as Arl., they haven't dropped that much or have largely recovered). Counties lowered the rates because otherwise, they would have received windfalls (e.g., a 20% increase in one year), and residents would have protested.

You have to consider all the angles on property tax amounts and rates. In the midwest, we paid a much higher rate per $X value than here, but the house was assessed at about half the value of the house here, and was twice its size (and the lot was 3-4X the size). So, we paid about the same $ amount in RE taxes there as we do here, but had a much nicer and bigger house. That's probably also why rates are slightly higher in farther out suburbs (e.g., Loudoun) vs. inner suburbs.

[elephantlaotie]

Originally Posted by tysonsengineer

Ok now I am following your argument since I found this

Maryland State Income Tax Rates Means that MoCo has a (4.75 + 3.2) 7.95% income tax rate for most residents. By comparison Virginia state income tax is a flat 5.75 for everyone (basically except for 17k earners and lower).

The benefit I would argue vs the Fairfax method is that our income tax all goes to the state, who again (like the gas tax) returns far less than what we provide back to us. In Moco, the amount they give the state as a whole, which rarely comes back to them as well, is less than the amount we do. When they take the 3.2% though they actually can address their own counties needs.

Frankly, and I know this will draw some people's ire, but if it means we can get real solutions for Fairfax, and not beg the state for 20% of our own money, I would be for a .5% additional income tax that would go towards Fairfax infrastructure only. That would be an extra 500 bucks per household, 41 bucks per month (about 200 million dollars aggregate) btw. The benefit would be actual improvements to the ease of our lives.

Unfortunately not allowed by the state of virginia. Best case scenario would be to just be able to get our money back to us, but good luck prying nova's liberal money out of the cold dead hands of the Richmond GOP.

For what it's worth, I haven't lived in Moco, but I lived for 6 years in Anne Arundel county in Maryland, and have a good deal of experience with the state, and I personally think NoVA's a much nicer place to live.

[Carlingtonian]

Originally Posted by ACWhite

Tysonsengineer, a key reason that recent real estate tax rates are relatively low is that the assessed values skyrocketed during the bubble (and in some areas such as Arl., they haven't dropped that much or have largely recovered). Counties lowered the rates because otherwise, they would have received windfalls (e.g., a 20% increase in one year), and residents would have protested.

You have to consider all the angles on property tax amounts and rates. In the midwest, we paid a much higher rate per $X value than here, but the house was assessed at about half the value of the house here, and was twice its size (and the lot was 3-4X the size). ....

Good points all. Indeed, the Arlington County Borg has not only raised the tax rate regularly during and since the housing boom, but assessments have not gone down much at all. (Last year, our assessment stayed the same, but the rate was higher than the previous year.)

Re. the regional differences: Another quirk is that some places (like Texas) have very high RE taxes but (in their case) no state income tax or a very low one. (Personally, I see it as more fair to tax income than possessions, whose value isn't realized if and until you sell.)

As to MoCo, our most liberal friends (who make us look conservative, and we're staunch Dems) live there--a vegetarian black/white couple, one of whom is from Europe--and are worried about the middle school their kids are going to end up in. And again, the taxes are a lot higher, and the commute to anywhere is pretty much awful unless you work in the NIH/FDA/bio-pharma corridor near there.

[hilsmom]

Originally Posted by Carlingtonian

Good points all. Indeed, the Arlington County Borg has not only raised the tax rate regularly during and since the housing boom, but assessments have not gone down much at all. (Last year, our assessment stayed the same, but the rate was higher than the previous year.)

I can tell you that part of this is factually incorrect. I worked for the Arlington County Board for a couple years during the boom (2001-3), and they did NOT raise the tax rate during those years. I know because I fielded calls from angry citizens who had incorrect information. Your total tax may have gone up, but your rate went down.

[Carlingtonian]

Originally Posted by hilsmom

I can tell you that part of this is factually incorrect. I worked for the Arlington County Board for a couple years during the boom (2001-3), and they did NOT raise the tax rate during those years. I know because I fielded calls from angry citizens who had incorrect information. Your total tax may have gone up, but your rate went down.

From the County's own website, dated Feb. 12 of this year:

"The Arlington County Board today voted unanimously to advertise a property tax rate of 97.8 cents per $100 of assessed value for Calendar Year (CY) 2012, including the stormwater sanitary district tax. This is 2 cents above the CY 2011 real estate tax rate." (Note the introductory statement, in which your employer notes that this is a correction to incorrect information the County had previously posted.)

This chart--also from ArlCo--shows that the 2005 rate was $0.878 per $100 assessed value. Given that the rate is now 97.8 cents, obviously, the tax rate increased between 2005 and 2012--along with assessed values. (The chart stops at 2005, but assesed values are also much higher now.)