property tax in sc (Charleston, York: sales, how much, homes)

[scbound]

I've recently heard that south carolina's school taxes are no longer "lumped in" with a home owner's property tax and that this difference is being made up by a one percent increase in the sales tax. Is this accurate? Living in New York and paying huge property/school tax, this sounds too good to be true. I'd appreciate any info.

[baylovers]

There is actually a bit of a debate that is going on with the theory and realization of it. Bottom line is that the schools need to get the money from somewhere ...

This article may explain some things for you:
http://www.thestate.com/mld/state/news/opinion/13630419.htm (broken link)

[businessperson]

There is a very informative thread on this subject on the NC Forum. You might want to take a look there.

[PharmD/MBA]

Originally Posted by businessperson

There is a very informative thread on this subject on the NC Forum. You might want to take a look there.

The forum on the NC side is ~50% reduction in SC property tax.

There will always be debate about major changes in policy. The biggest issue most of my friends on the school board have with the new law is not the amount of monies they will get. It is more that the autonomy they had had to raise millage at their discretion has been removed. I know this has been said and noone believes it but if you calculated what the school districts would have recieved last year based on the new sales tax, they would have come out ahead of the old tax system. Because noone believes this the legislature has promised to monitor how much the schools are recieving due to the increased 1% and to make sure their income increases according to what we should expect based on population expansion and inflation. Noone can be sure that this will hapen. But what you can be assure of is that the old system where only 5 of 9 people needed to vote to increase the millage rate of Charleston County for example, was antiquated in need of change. Those five people voted each and every year for the last five years to raise the millage rate and effectively taxed people out of their homes rather that admit that the amount of money coming in may not have been the problem. Not knowing for sure, but I assume due to the support the new law recieved, this was the case in counties state wide.

As a side note, this was an admendment to the state constitution and has been implemented as of 1/1/07 for tax bills due 1/1/08. It can not be overturned without subsequent ammendment requiring 2/3 vote of congress.