Posted on 12/17/2003 7:21:11 AM PST by LurkedLongEnough
Robert Torre lives in Bedford, where the property taxes would choke a horse.
He should know. He keeps four on the 4 acres he owns in Bedford Village, where his tax bill this year is $30,000.
So when Westchester legislators raised the county property tax levy 8.5 percent last week and promised to raise it an additional 13.3 percent next year if the state blocks their request to increase the sales tax instead, Torre said the choice between the two taxes was, for him, a no-brainer.
"It climbs up every year," Torre said about his property taxes, which have about doubled since he bought his five-bedroom house on Cantitoe Street 22 years ago. "A sales tax, I feel — and I'm in business, too — would probably be more evenly dispersed, with everybody taking a little part of it."
Michael Dobbins lives in an apartment in Port Chester, where 57 percent of the housing units are occupied by renters, more than twice the rate in Bedford. Renting gives Dobbins a feeling that he has at least one degree of separation from property taxes, even if landlords typically pass them along to tenants when rent regulations allow.
"Raise homeowners' taxes instead of the sales tax because I'm not a homeowner, but I buy," Dobbins said. He said he's shopping for a house, but the one he has his eye on is in Gadsden, Ala., where he recently looked at a four-bedroom house on an acre and a half for $43,000. (His annual property tax bill would be about $211, tax officials there said). In the meantime, Dobbins, a custodian in the Blind Brook schools, and his wife, a cashier at Costco, are spending almost all of their income as soon as it comes in to support themselves and their five children.
The two men staked their positions in the debate over which tax to raise to fill the $70 million gap in Westchester County's 2004 budget, based on their own economic circumstances. But the debate is too nuanced to say that, across-the-board, it divides the wealthy from the working class, owners from renters, rural from urban, north county from south county.
In fact, a day of interviews in Bedford (median household income: $105,053) and in Port Chester ($45,381) found no consensus about the two proposals in either place. Homeowners in Bedford who favored increasing the property tax despite the heavier toll it would take on them noted that it can be deducted on income tax bills, but sales taxes cannot. Shoppers in Port Chester noted that sales taxes can often be dodged without much trouble — Connecticut, where the tax is just 6 percent statewide, is only five minutes up Boston Post Road — but property taxes cannot.
Other arguments abounded: Sales taxes are more regressive, meaning they hit the poorer harder, people in both municipalities noted. At the same time, sales taxes in Westchester are among the lowest in the state (7 percent outside the four largest cities, which collect their own taxes), while property taxes in Westchester are among the highest ($6,826 on the median single-family home in 1999, according to the U.S. census).
The debate is muddied by the fact that while the impact of a property tax increase on any home or business owner can be measured with precision, estimating the impact of a higher sales tax is more art than science. When a similar sales tax increase was proposed last year, unscientific estimates of its annual cost ranged from $324 to $510 per household. The higher sales tax would not be imposed in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, New Rochelle or White Plains.
Jane Smith and Donna Reimer sell real estate from the Houlihan Lawrence office in Katonah, a hamlet on Bedford's eastern edge. Both own single-family homes in town. Smith pays $9,800 a year in property taxes. Reimer won't say what her tax bills are, except that they're substantially higher.
"I just think they're horrendous, and I don't want them to go higher," Reimer said, as she, Smith and a third broker, Sarah Zipp, slung Christmas lights around a small tree outside their Katonah Avenue office on a drizzly afternoon last week. "I'd much rather see the sales tax go up than the property tax. We're already paying at the top."
"Do you want another view?" Smith interjected. "I think for our property taxes, we get a great deal. Wonderful communities, where planning and zoning are important. Controlled growth. Wonderful schools. We're close to New York (City) but in the country. We have the best of both worlds. That's why people move here."
Outside the New Village Market a few doors down, Julietta Appleton, a therapist who owns a home in Mount Kisco, had another idea.
"Why can't they raise the cigarette tax and liquor tax?" she asked. "Westchester has a ridiculously high property tax. They already raised the sales tax this year. So enough already. I buy a lot of stuff online purposely to avoid the sales tax." The state raised its portion of the sales tax from 4 percent to 4.25 percent on June 1.
Twenty-two miles away from Katonah Avenue's antiques shops and real estate offices, with framed pictures of multimillion-dollar estates hanging in the windows, Port Chester's grittier Main Street is crowded with nail salons, launderettes and Spanish restaurants. An infusion of immigrants from South America and Mexico in the past two decades has pushed the Latino population in the village to 48 percent of the total. Spanish is spoken everywhere. In Bedford, Latinos are 7 percent of the population.
Despite the argument that sales taxes are harder on working classes than on the wealthy, most of the half-dozen people interviewed along Main Street said it's the lesser of two evils.
Ivonne Garro owns Grace's Beauty Salon on Main Street and a single-family home in Valhalla. The haircuts and stylings that are Garro's bread and butter are exempt from sales taxes (although county legislators are considering ending the exemption), but the property taxes she pays on her home already amount to $10,000. She bought the salon two years ago, 21 years after arriving from El Salvador.
"I prefer the (sales) tax to go up 1 percent. That would be the best thing," Garro said. "It's only one cent, and people won't even see it."
She shifted in her chair, crossed her arms, then her legs, then considered the property tax increase that's the alternative: "They are really making it difficult for middle-class people to survive. God bless me, 20 percent? They are making it so hard to live here in Westchester County."
Get a grip lady..............she obviously neither drinks nor smokes or would know that cigarette taxes in NY are the highest (or close to it) in the nation.
Get the county to stop overspending and you won't have to worry about increasing taxes.
A revolution is coming soon.
It will not be healthy to be a tax raising SOB.
Once they saw folks moving out of the city and populating Putnam, Wapingers falls, and points north who were dock workers, truck drivers, and school teachers, something had to be done before it spread to their turf.
They want the taxes that high. People need to understand that. If you fret about taxes and their impact on your family expenses you are not welcome.
The revolution will exclude Westchester.
Don't be so sure.
The leaders of the 1776 revolution were well to do.
When the rich in this country get fed up, the big shakeup will occur!
I now live in Wisconsin which still wants a few farmers. Huge house, all the barns(4), outside storage sheds, 100 acres owned and another 50 rented. I pay $2100 per year in taxes.
Now if I had just a home in the country and not a functioning farm, my taxes would be about $10,000 per year.
Those of means are busy manipulating the system to their benefit and exporting our capital and futures. Most of them live in a 50 mile radius of New York.
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