property taxes comparison (Johnson City, Savannah: sales, houses, schools)

[joee]

I've been batting property taxes on different states and counties back & forth for some time now & never making much headway unless your a professor in mathmatics.

finally came across one that makes sense, so tell me if this will apply to various areas so one can compare apples to apples.


To calculate the tax on your property, assume you have a house with an APPRAISED VALUE of $100,000.
The ASSESSED VALUE is $25,000 (25% of $100,000),
and the TAX RATE has been set by your county commission at $3.20 per hundred of assessed value.

To figure the tax simply multiply the assessed value ($25,000)
by the tax rate (3.20 per hundred dollars assessed). = 800.00 taxes

rate calculator:
http://www.tennesseetrustee.com/index.cgi?BISKIT=4292262701&CONTEXT=cat&cat=123483 (broken link)

I came across all the tn counties with the rates per hundred:
http://170.142.183.29/PAnew/LR.asp?W=05


my property taxes (not in tn) run this amount (2547.00)
96,624.00 appraised value - 33% assesed value = 31,885.00 / 100 = 318.00
318.00 x 8.01 (rate per hundred of assessed value) = 2547.00 taxes.

now correct me if i'm wrong but the same home & property per say in cookeville tn (putnam county) with a 3.4825 per hundred rate city & county would run:
96,624.00 x 25% = 24,156.00
24,156.00 / 100 = 241.00
241.00 x 3.4825 = 839.00 taxes vs. 2547.00


or to find a comparable property online:
http://www.tennesseetrustee.com/index.cgi?BISKIT=4292262701&CONTEXT=art&cat=10000& art=27 (broken link)

would you say this is an effective way to compare taxes between 2 different areas.

[swampbuck]

My property taxes on 100 ac in henry co tn run me $350 a year. This is vacant land all wooded with no dwellings. My TAXES in cobb county GA with an 2000 sq ft home on a half ac run me about 3k a year . Now you can see why I want to get moved to TN so bad.

[Bubba on my mountain]

My taxes in Florida for a 3100 sq ft home on 2.41 acres was $3,000 and going up rapidly. In TN for 250 acres is $667.00. Thats among several reasons I now live in TN. No real conveniences here, but don't need them.

[Joss]

Your formula is correct. I have been looking at the same factors.

The only potential flaws I see are:

1. Property tax alone is not a complete picture. Sales tax and income tax are also location specific and can make a significant difference.

2. Houses differ widely in value, location to location. A house in NYC costs a ton more than the same house in TN. Some way to factor that would be nice since the benefit would go to TN.

3. Be sure you have ALL the property taxes included. In Savannah, for example, the City and County property tax rates combine to about $2.44 per hundred. But there is a separate school mileage that adds anothr $1.58, bringing the total to $4.042. I haven't yet discovered how Tennessee pays for schools as the only mileage rates I've seen listed are for the Counties and Cities. Maybe it's in those somewhere.

Putting this all on a spread sheet, my comparison of Savannah to Johnson City comes out about $2,000 to the good in TN.

But then there are other cost of living factors that could play one way or the other: food, utilities, fuel, medical. It might be more comprehensive to just use one of the internet comparison calculators.

(broken link)

[mbmouse]

Don't forget too that TN has a high sales tax rate. It depends on what county because it is a combination of two: State and County tax. Most of East TN is at 9.75%. Some of that does go to school boards in that county. We also have the lottery and that is for education and unlike some other states, it really DOES go to education. The only difference in Property taxes is whether you have city and county or just county.

[joee]

this link will put a few more peices of the puzzle together, shows it was updated jan 06.

http://www.retirementliving.com/RLtaxes.html