Wayne county residential tax(city tax) on salary(income) (Detroit: apartment, house)

[purecountry]

Can anybody tell me that in michigan any county has residential tax(city tax) on salary(income)?

when i was living in philadelphia and working in NJ, I was paying state tax and residential tax(city tax) on my salary even though i was living in apartment.

[Retroit]

Cities with income taxes: http://www.payroll-taxes.com/PayrollTaxes/00000221.htm

All cities have property taxes (that I know of). And if they don't, I wouldn't expect the residents there to let the word out!

Don't know about property taxes for apartment dwellers -seems odd. Your income/paycheck is taxed no matter what kind of dwelling you live in.

...unless I'm misunderstanding your terminology.

[Coldjensens]

Counties doe not have income tax, but some cities do. Detroit has a fairly substantial income tax. I am not aware of any others.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by Retroit

Cities with income taxes: http://www.payroll-taxes.com/PayrollTaxes/00000221.htm

All cities have property taxes (that I know of). And if they don't, I wouldn't expect the residents there to let the word out!

Don't know about property taxes for apartment dwellers -seems odd. Your income/paycheck is taxed no matter what kind of dwelling you live in.

...unless I'm misunderstanding your terminology.

Intersting. I did not know that so many other cities has income tax. Looks like Detroit and Highland Park are the higest. Given the options available, I do not see why anyone would pay the income tax to live in Highland park rather than just living elsewhere. It must be hard to sell a house there. Detroit I understand, but Highland park is just another suburb, surrounded by simlar suburbs. Why would people pay 2 % of their income for the privilege of living there? Maybe there is something that I do nto know about Highland Park. (Probably a lot of things).

[MidMichguy]

I don't know that there is anything you don't know about Highland Park. Other than the fact that it's not surrounded by suburbs. It's surrounded by Detroit, except for a fairly small part of it's border which touches on Hamtramck.

I'm sure there's lots of people that are from Highland Park and love it, so forgive me for what follows. Highland Park seems like one of those things that might have been a good idea 50 years ago, but makes no sense currently. It's sitting right smack in the middle of a part of Detroit that is ripe for redevelopment, between relatively intact and nice parts of the city and along the proposed line for the new light rail.

Highland Park probably needs to be absorbed into Detroit to help ensure consistent development of the whole corridor and prevent it from standing out. In other words, if they finish the train line and the Woodward corridor keeps improving, do you want Highland Park sitting in the middle of it?

That's aside from the regulatory hassle of having an entirely unnecessary municipal body sitting in the middle of the area you're trying to draw investment to.

[Retroit]

The Highland Park income tax was instituted in 1964, when it was still a desirable place to live.

I see no reason to absorb Highland Park into Detroit because of the rail line. If both cities benefit (as the pro-rail crowd claims they will), then why shouldn't H.P. reap those benefits. If Detroit was a much better run city, I could understand an "absorption". If they intend to extend the rail line into Oakland County, H.P. can be a testing ground for municipality coordination.

(No, I didn't read this in The Economist )

[MidMichguy]

I'm not saying the geographic area that is Highland Park shouldn't benefit, and I'm not saying that it won't benefit. What I'm saying is that the administrative hassle of dealing with two separate municipal and regulatory structures to pursue redevelopment of the Woodward corridor is an unnecessary hassle and will likely lead to development being focused on the Detroit portions of the corridor.

If there was a single municipal entity in charge of the entire area they could ensure consistent tax and development incentives and coherently address the zoning issues that are certain to arise.

Detroit certainly has it's management issues, but Highland Park isn't exactly a utopia of efficient governance. They didn't have water for about half a week this year, they're police department is on the border of going broke and getting shut down again, and a huge percentage of the city is blighted. I haven't seen any numbers on this, but my gut reaction is that it would initially be an economic burden on Detroit to annex them, but IMHO the ability to ensure a consistent regulatory scheme to spur redevelopment of the Woodward corridor is worth it.

[Retroit]

Light rail will be funded mostly be federal, state, and private funds and not by city funds (if I understand correctly), so I don't think that traversing cities' borders should have a detrimental effect. Like I said, if the pro-rail crowd wants this to spread through the suburbs (as they seem to be indicating), then leaving Highland Park as is will pave the way (bad pun) for other cities.

[MidMichguy]

The funding may be federal, but it's being set up and run by a public/private partnership, and almost all the funding for the first stretch of rail has been contributed by private entities.

That said, the funding isn't really relevant. The rail line itself will likely have it's regulatory process sped through and guaranteed. The rail line itself is only part of the process of redeveloping the Woodward corridor though, the other part if it is redeveloping the blighted areas along that corridor that lie to either side of the rail line.

Part of that is going to have to be accomplished with a variety of tax incentives and governmental support. Additionally, since there's substantial vacancies and abandoned properties along parts of the corridor, the zoning for it may be an issue that pops up throughout the process and will need to be dealt with.

None of these problems are insoluble, or event particularly difficult. My concern is that while Detroit government is engaged and willing and able to make things happen along the corridor, the Highland Park government may not be as capable or interested (a particular concern given their very limited funds and the likelihood they'll return to emergency financial manager status at some point in the next few years) and the developers will pass it by to focus on where the better incentives and cooperation are in Detroit. This would leave us with a big stretch of blighted mess in the middle of the newly redeveloped area. It would eventually get filled in, despite any regulatory mess, if the economic case for it was there, but the whole situation can be avoided. In short, there's no good reason to involve two municipal regulatory entities in your redevelopment project when you can have just one.

Additionally, there doesn't seem to be any good reason NOT to incorporate Highland Park into Detroit- their financial situation is dubious and they don't seem to be deriving any prosperity or benefits from independence. Plus, given Governor Snyders newly announced incentives for consolidation and improving efficiency of services there could be a significant financial benefit from incorporating them into Detroit and consolidating their redundant support structure into the City's.

[Retroit]

I don't know MidMichguy, if H.P. is much worst off than Detroit, why would Detroit want to "annex" them? I would think that H.P. would have the most to benefit from the rail line since every resident and business would be within walking distance of it, unlike Detroit where only a small portion will benefit. I haven't heard any opposition from H.P. and can't imagine why the city or developers would not be interested. Also, once the line is extended to 8 Mile, H.P. will occupy the central -- and presumably, most used -- portion of the line.