Property taxes (Austin, Center: live in, bill, wealthiest)

[centralaustinite]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Oh, by lower cost area, I was thinking some remote area in East Texas - property taxes are low and no state income tax still. I cannot fathom Florida or Tennessee or the PNW for retiree years. Although, in the end, it may depend on where the kids end up.....

our kids want out of Texas, sigh!

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by karpo1

Easy place to check your property tax rate is by typing your address to (deleted link due to C-D TOS against posting links to broker site), it shows tax history also for most properties that are >2 years old.

Or you could go to the website of the tax appraiser/collector of the county you're interested in. That's readily available public information on most of them.

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by CarnivalGal

Yep. We bought our house 12 years ago, and in that time, our property taxes have damn near doubled.

Do you have your homestead exemption? That limits increases to 10% a year no matter what the actual market value is.

[Trainwreck20]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

Do you have your homestead exemption? That limits increases to 10% a year no matter what the actual market value is.

Yeah, but easy enough to double over 12 years. You can actually more than double the assessed value in 8 years. It can triple in 12 years.

[CarnivalGal]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

Do you have your homestead exemption? That limits increases to 10% a year no matter what the actual market value is.

Yep. Pretty much goes up 10% every year.

I'll also add that I usually dispute the assessed value. One year, I got them to lower it by $12K. But every other year, they've either kept it the same or lowered the value by like $1,000, which doesn't really do squat as far as taxes go.

[Austin97]

Originally Posted by pop251808

Well, I'd rather pay income tax on my incoming money, rather than pay some arbitrary number. I already bought and paid for my property, I don't want to have to a) keep paying for it and b) have that amount in no way tied to what I earn. After all, if I earn some number, I can pay a portion of it. No such guarantee with a property value based tax.

I've always found it ironic that in the USA, supposedly the land of ironclad property rights, people have agreed to a confiscatory scheme of value based taxation as well as eminent domain for an ever expanding list of reasons. Seriously, if you think your "equity building" in your property is a form of financial protection, that means you will sell it some day. Your "right" to own your property for a long time is tempered by your need to cover an ever expanding tax bill. So much for the concept of "home." You're really just renting.

property taxes long predate income taxes. The reason being before computers it was easy to tax property.

For quite some time income taxes were unconstitutional.

You are against estate taxes too then right?

[pop251808]

Originally Posted by Austin97

property taxes long predate income taxes. The reason being before computers it was easy to tax property.

For quite some time income taxes were unconstitutional.

You are against estate taxes too then right?

Nope. The old "my kids will inherit our 10 million plus ranch and won't have the cash to pay the taxes" argument has been proven to apply to virtually no one. There are more than enough entitled trust fund kids in America already; let's not do all we can to create more of them. The rich going to be rich; don't worry about them so hard.

[TexasHorseLady]

Originally Posted by pop251808

Nope. The old "my kids will inherit our 10 million plus ranch and won't have the cash to pay the taxes" argument has been proven to apply to virtually no one. There are more than enough entitled trust fund kids in America already; let's not do all we can to create more of them. The rich going to be rich; don't worry about them so hard.

It's really been proven? By whom? Can you provide any cites?

[pop251808]

Originally Posted by TexasHorseLady

It's really been proven? By whom? Can you provide any cites?

When this issue came up this year there were multiple news stories on it. Last year of available figures had something like 80 families in the entire country paid an estate tax on an inherited estate that could in any way be classified as a very succesful small business. The vast majority of cases, some 5000 or more which included almost all of the real money, were huge oligarchic estates. And, of course, not even half of those 80 were farms or ranches.
My point remains: it's such a vanishingly small number of cases these days as to constiture a myth, albeit a powerful myth in Marlboro country. I'd be OK with congress writing a bill that said something like, "eliminate the tax on any sole proprietorship family farm and ranch, regarless of its size, but leave the estate tax as it is otherwise." But of course, that's not what's on the table right now, is it? They're going to use the "family farm" story to gut taxes on the wealthiest and most undeserving of a tax cut among us.

[mickey65]

Mine will go up even more next year (I live in Round Rock) since out here they fly planes over the neighborhoods and take photos and compare them from the year before. They spotted my new deck that I replaced my old deck with. The new one is a lot smaller than the old one and I had to replace it since the old one was 30 years old, falling apart and causing damage to my house. An appraisor came knocking at my door a couple of months ago requesting to take photos and measurements of it. So with that "improvement" to my property - higher taxes for me next year! Great...