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Posted on 08/29/2013 9:14:48 AM PDT by Hojczyk
Egg Harbor, New Jersey (MY9NJ) - The mayor of one New Jersey town is actually moving out because he claims he can’t afford to pay the property taxes there.
Egg Harbor Mayor Sonny McCullough bought his home in 1985 for about $350,000 and according to him, now he is officially taxed out.
In 2012, Egg Harbor property taxes were increased by 60% making his home now worth $1.1 million and that comes with close to a $35,000 tax bill.
Depending on which formula you use, New Jersey is either number one or number two in the country for pricey property taxes.
McCullough said, “property tax is the unfairest tax in the world. It’s not based on someone’s ability to earn money. It’s based on the property value.”
Of the property taxes, 60% come from school taxes, 30% is for the township and local taxes make up less than 10% of the property tax bill.
This seems to be a problem for many residents across New Jersey.
One Hightstown resident, who is selling their house, said that property taxes are a big factor as to why many people are moving out.
The woman said, “The property taxes are killing me and nobody is buying because of the taxes in Hightstown, this is the third time we put the house up for sale.”
Ha!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Pay your fair share you bastards. :)
You can always sell your house for the right price
These folks need to accept that they are not going to sell their crappy jersey shore and split level tract houses for the $million dollar tax assessments
The “equity” they thought they had was erased by the taxing authority
These elderly sellers need to get real, sell low and gth out
Rent an apartment or go to South Carolina
BTW, the low sale prices ultimately will then reduce the tax assessments for the new buyers - though the buyers may need lawyers to fight the tax authority to adjust their property valuation
You folks in New Jersey brought this on yourselves!!! Yep....keep voting for left-wing, liberal, Obamabots like Cory Booker and bury yourselves even more....by your own choice and hand!!! Idiots....vote for Steve Lonegan for Senate!!! if you vote for Booker......please no complaints later!!! LOL!!!
For those of you who like to deride California, Our home was built in 1982. It cost about the same amount to build as this home in New Jersey. 1.5 acre lot, 4,000 square ft of living space. Property taxes today (thanks to Proposition 13) are $6,600 per year. The home across the street sold about seven years ago, so the value stepped up, but the taxes there are still only half of those on place in NJ. Yes, CA has manifold problems thanks to our liberal government, but I submit that we are not even out of low gear by comparison to New Jersey! But then, NJ has been a state longer so that may be the reason that “they are ahead.”
“Rent an apartment or go to South Carolina...”
But...leave your lefty politics in New Jersey!
It used to be in America you could not tax a man’s labor nor his property.
What's with the repetitive and redundant headline?
Prop 13 .... still the best answer even if Buffet doesn’t think it is fair
Whaddya wanna bet this won’t stop him from endorsing property tax increases on everybody else?
Well the truth of the problem is the state constitution (home rule) and the supreme court.
Rental prices are ridiculous too. Almost as bad as NYC. We also have the highest or second highest auto insurance rates in the country.
I’m lucky. I’m in a town that is about 70’percent Republican . It’s the best I can do while my family lives in this state.
That’s 10% per year. In only 10 years, the local government will have confiscated the full value of the home.
Property taxes are a gradual confiscation of your home. Typically around 3% a year, eventually you have paid them the full value of your home.
True leftists hate private property. They can’t confiscate it all just yet, so they slice off a little bit at a time and call it a property tax.
Let’s see. I paid $200,000 for a home. The guy next to me sells his house for $400,000 and leaves, I stay. So my taxes are reassessed up because HE made money and left. Fixed income people are screwed. End reassessment, use cost basis.
It would be real interesting to see what his thoughts were on property taxes and government spending for things it couldn’t afford when he was Mayor...
There is a fix for property taxes.
It will require an agnowledgement and committment to the fact that the costs of local government and local schools, particularly in the human costs, are too high now, unsustainable and often higher than the median - incomes and benefits - of MOST taxpayers in the local economy.
Next it requires admitting that changes in home values should have zero, zip, zilch to do with funding local government or how much local government can get in taxes. No one gets more money in the bank or more income to spend just because their property values went up, so why should changes in those values produce more revenue for local government; they shouldn’t.
Next it requires going to a fixed-rate property tax system that uses the housing, business and public service infrastructure in the locality (streets, sewers and the like) - not its “value”, to determine attributes and numbers of each of those as (a) basis of the need of the local government and (b) a basis for distributing relatively fixed rates of tax.
For instance - maintaining local streets has a budget. There are a certain number of miles/yards/feet of local roads that come under that budget. Each home and business has a certain amount of road frontage and contributes to a certain amount of use on the road it fronts on. It could be determined, based on road frontage, how much of the road budget ought to be assessed to each home and business - as at least the same means - road frontage - is used to make that determination, so no one is paying more or less just ‘cause “values” are “higher” on their stretch of road.
Each home and business represents a unit that is entitled to local police, fire (in some cases), municipal justice and municipal administration, EQUALLY no matter what the “value” of their property is. The budgets for local police, fire, municipal justice and municipal administration can then be mathematically propprtioned to the number of business and residential units in the locality, equally regardless of property “value” one could make the argument that a “muti-family” property for this case consists of as many “units” as there are residential units on it). Should the police be expected to run faster or slower to a location because its value is higher or lower? No. So why should a higher or lower “POTENTIAL SOMEDAY SALE VALUE” cost a property unit more, or less, for police protection? It shouldn’t.
There are already usage rates in many cases for sewer and water and where such usages rates for sewer and water are absent they can be put in.
Taxes supporting PUBLIC schools should be figured with a certain majority of their costs proportioned “per-capita” among the households sending children to the schools, some % of the total proportioned in some “equal” manner for commercial property units and only a minor % of the total proportioned equally among all residential units without children - with parents with school kids paying the bulk of the cost, businesses paying some and residents without kids (that add NOTHING to the costs of the schools) paying the least.
The combination of the fixed methods will result in an aggregate and “evenly” (by definition of each of the means of proportioning the costs) distributed total tax bearing NO imprint or “progressivity” to property values, only the costs of the various expenses of the locality and the willingness of the local taxpayers to support those costs; with changes in the local property values NOT able to automatically change how much the residents or businesses can be taxed.
The myth that “endless increasing property values” will fund endless muncipal cost increases is reaching its dead end. The tax paradigm of property value based property taxes was always wrong, always unequal, always a tax on a “possible” value of property, always taking more revenue when for the majority rising values gave them nothing additional to pay the higher tax assesssments with. It is a morally wrong paradigm.
It is time it was tossed out.
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