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Can someone explain to me the connection as to why I should pay higher annual property taxes to the city/state simply because my home has increased in value?
First off, my salary has not increased the hypothetical 30-40% along with my home value, so where am I supposed to magically come up with the additional thousands of dollars in taxes?
But even more to the point, and what REALLY angers me about the whole structure of property taxes, is WTF the government needs 40% more in revenue coming in? Did their expenses somehow suddenly rise because the home values of people living in the state just increased?
Why don't the state governments LOWER the tax rate since their expenditures could not have increased 40%, and will suddenly be sitting on a huge surplus? Why hasn't the garbage passing for MSM today question the politicians on this?
The governments are obviously collecting the far higher taxes, which is taking more money out of the pockets of the public, reducing private sector spending substantially, and of course finding ways to spend this money justifying these huge increases in tax revenue.
But it is an obscene and under-reported action that it would seem, only property tax caps might fix...
Municiplaities have to balance their budgets unlike the federal governements. Increased revenues = increased spending. Governments feel if they aren't spending and passing tons of laws that they are not justifying their jobs.
Likely if school districts stuck to education instead of building Taj Mahal like schools and overly generous benefits packages to teachers unions whose members get 3 months off every year, that kids would be better educated and their parents could save a little more back for the college funding as well through lower property taxes.
Property taxes, in my honest opinion, are one of the most regressive taxes out there. Lots of people are being forced from their homes because they can't afford the taxes on them any longer. It's happened by the millions as city centers are "gentrified." A nice sounding name, but with an unfortunate side effect of pushing the poor out.
That said, I can't offer many suggestions on reforming it.
My point was that how do the politicians justify it, where they get access to 40% MORE revenue, simply because home values have increased?
Did their budgets suddenly increase 40% in correlation to the increase in property values?
What about when home values fall, does that mean their budget is somehow magically 40% less?
Pretty much, yes. Have you ever gone to your City Treasurer's website or office and read your city's accounting reports? Most cities of size have a dedicated tv station on which council meetings and budget hearings may be watched.
You need to remember that municipalities are also obligated to pay bondholders for the loans they've received when they had to raise funds that could not be covered by property taxes and fees. General these are general obligation bonds that go for infrastructure maintanence like water, sewer, street lights, buildings, etc... . Special issue bonds are generally voted upon by the public and cover things like building airports, sports stadiums, and the like. A specific tax is generally levied to guarantee that the municipality will not default on those bonds.
Pretty much, yes. Have you ever gone to your City Treasurer's website or office and read your city's accounting reports? Most cities of size have a dedicated tv station on which council meetings and budget hearings may be watched.
You need to remember that municipalities are also obligated to pay bondholders for the loans they've received when they had to raise funds that could not be covered by property taxes and fees. General these are general obligation bonds that go for infrastructure maintanence like water, sewer, street lights, buildings, etc... . Special issue bonds are generally voted upon by the public and cover things like building airports, sports stadiums, and the like. A specific tax is generally levied to guarantee that the municipality will not default on those bonds.
You're putting the cart before the horse, since cities cannot predict that housing values will rise in the future. Any municipality that bases its budgets on ever-rising property values of 20, 30 or 40% as we had for a few years is run by idiots.
You're putting the cart before the horse, since cities cannot predict that housing values will rise in the future. Any municipality that bases its budgets on ever-rising property values of 20, 30 or 40% as we had for a few years is run by idiots.
Many states and municipalities did the above.
The thing is that repairs don't wait, whether it's roads, buildings or water and sewer. And unfunded mandates never stop.
Prior to the meltdown the State of MD mandated that the 66 largest sewer plants upgrade to Enhanced Nitrogen Removal process. The construction started and bonding was finalized at the beginning of the meltdown. Some numbers: Ellicott City, MD-$120M; Chesapeake Beach/North Beach/ Calvert County, MD (shared plant, rather small 1M gallons/day)-$30M. There's a small town on the Eastern Shore (I can't remember the name) with 250 residents-$1.8M.
All that money had to be borrowed and the bondholders will get their payments every 6 months on schedule. Now, those payments shouldn't come out of general tax revenue but user charges, but it's the same theory.
Road construction/rebuild (you don't bond pothole repair), building construction, equipment purchase bonded payments do come out of general tax revenues.
A stupid example: my Town bought a sewer jet machine 3 years ago. Several residents raised Hell about it being too expensive at $30K. We bought it anyway. In the first 9 months we saved the cost of the machine by being able to clear sewer blockages and perform maintenance ourselves rather than contracting it out like we had been doing. A simple blockage clean out by the contractor was a minimum of $2500.
All politics is local. YOU have the oppornunity to VOTE for the people that create and pass those budgets.
And yet the politicians that affect their wallet the most, the county commissioners, township supervisors, etc. always escape the scrutiny of the average voter since most voters are only paying attention to the D.C. politicians.
I am opposed to all real property, sales and excise taxes. All governments should be entirely funded on progressive income taxes based on all income from all sources
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