Text 32980, 82 rader
Skriven 2009-06-02 05:18:02 av Bob Ackley (1:300/3)
  Kommentar till text 32937 av Dale Shipp (1:261/1466.0)
Ärende: Property taxes
======================
Replying to a message of Dale Shipp to Dan Ceppa:

 DS>  -=> On 06-01-09  04:23,  Dan Ceppa <=-
 DS>  -=> spoke to Dale Shipp about Property taxes <=-

 DS>> Property taxes vary a lot here.  The tax rate in the county I live in
 DS>> is perhaps half of the rate in Baltimore City.
 DC>> 
 DC>> Now comes the fun part:  Are you assessed at twice as much as the
 DC>> city?   

 DS> Nope -- the assessment is done by the state, not by the counties.

Here, in Nebraska and in California, assements are done by the counties.  In 
California and Nebraska the county assessor is an elected position.  Years ago
when the Nebraska legislature ordered that all property in the state be
re-assessed
and revalued (always up, it seems), the voters fired their respective county
assessors
at the next election.

 DS>  It
 DS> is supposed to reflect the value of the property.  Each county then
 DS> determines its tax rate in $ per $100 of assessed value.  Baltimore
 DS> City puts that at $2.268 for each $100 of assessed value.  My county
 DS> taxes at a rate of $1.014 per $100.   Lowest county rate is $0.321
 DS> per $100.

 DC>> Where property taxes go really wrong is that they are based on
 DC>> "assesed  evaluation".  The only fair evaluation should be on
 DC>> purchase price, plus,  perhaps, exterior improvements.  

 DS> Why?  If you look at the property data base, you can see many
 DS> properties that sold for $0.  Should they pay no taxes?  I have no
 DS> arguement against a rate based on current value of the property.

 DC>> It's not my problem that my neighbor paid 10x what I paid for my
 DC>> place.   Until I sell mine, it's only worth what I paid for it and
 DC>> not a dollar  more.  In fact, unless I sell, it isn't worth anything
 DC>> to anyone else  but me.  To base my taxes on a neigbor that overpaid
 DC>> for the house next  door is entirely wrong.  

In the older parts of Omaha you can see a house sitting on one lot with the
adjacent lot vacant but fenced by the owners of that house.  Sometimes it's
one house on the middle of 3 lots with all 3 of them fenced together.  Seems
the 'vacant' lots are 'unimproved' and are taxed much less (much lower assessed
value) than the 'improved' one.

My solution to that is to base the taxes on the square footage of the lot
regardless
of what's on it.  Before you claim that people with expensive houses would be 
getting a big tax break I note that I have never seen a McMansion on a standard
city lot (most wouldn't *fit* on a standard city lot), the lots most of those
things
are sitting on comprise most of what would be a city block.

Years ago (nearly 40 of them) a co-worker also worked part-time as a real
estate agent.  He hosted an office party at his house in Papillion (in those
days
one had to be at least a major to afford a house in that burg and he was a
technical sergeant - and he made more money selling houses on weekends than
the AF was paying him).  To look at it from the outside the house looked like a
dump.  I commented on it and he told me that if he did anything to improve it
(repair the garage, paint the porch, concrete the gravel driveway, etc.) his
property
taxes would go up because the assessor would see the improvements.  *Inside*
the
house was another story, completely finished basement with deep pile carpeting
-
but the assessor couldn't see that.

Basing the tax on the lot's size would go a long way toward getting people (in
this
country) to fix up or improve their houses.  As it is, anything they do raises
the
taxes they have to pay every year - and that is a major discouragement toward
doing
anything to maintain or improve the property (lower assessed values = lower
taxes).

--- FleetStreet 1.19+
 * Origin: Bob's Boneyard, Emerson, Iowa (1:300/3)