Is There Relief From High Property Taxes
Posted on March 25, 2008 in the Property taxes category
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The National Taxpayers Union writes that as many as 60% of all homeowners are over-assessed and not in line with their home value. (“How To Fight Property Taxes” 2004 p.1) |
The answer is more likely no. As long as the cost of living continues to rise, property taxes will continue to rise as well. Even with the housing market right now, the economy is still on the rise. Schools still need money, communities need money and other districts need money as well. If no one would need money, like back in the cowboy and Indian days, then no one would have to pay taxes. Since this will never happen, property taxes are going to continue. Schools and school district are the major holder of the capital funds that are brought in by property taxes.
The only way to reduce property taxes and find some relief is to find better ways for schools to utilize smaller amounts of money. One example of poor spending happened in one local community, where the school board approved buying some type of removable flooring for a certain school without considering the time and labor needed to place it and remove between group activities. As a result, the expensive flooring is not used and was offered to another school in the community. This resulted in taxpayer’s money being spent foolishly and is now not available for other needs.
This is just one example of wasted tax dollars being spent. If there was a way to give relief from high property taxes, one would have been found by now. That fact that salaries are rising and more school districts are more about new technology than the old way of learning has called for an increase in higher taxes. One way to cut expenses would be to teach students the way baby boomers were taught, with textbooks and teachers. Libraries today could become obsolete if students continue to use computers for all their schoolwork.
Relief from high property taxes requires rethinking the way things are done today verses how things were done years ago. This goes for schools, fire and police, city governments and overall city beautification. There should be more volunteer work for beautification rather than spending thousands of dollars to replace flowers on the medians or buy new garbage cans for the downtown area because you found out the ones you bought are not user friendly. Putting in new streets and then deciding you need to have new sewers a year later is mismanagement of tax dollars. If someone would appoint a committee to oversee some of the horrible spending practices of local communities, relief from high property taxes would be a little closer to a reality.
No one wants to pay high property taxes, but when a referendum is up for vote for new artwork in a circle of a street and the majority thinks it is a great idea, everyone loses more tax dollars. Maybe the piece could have donated like the previous years artwork was. Of course, these are only some issues for higher property taxes, but without any say in the matter, many people are going to keep paying high property taxes.
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Mortgage-Interest Deduction: The Unseen Costs
In general, I am opposed to just about any tax increase. However, the mortgage interest deduction is one of my least favorite tax breaks. First of all, it’s a regressive tax deduction that transfers wealth from renters and businesses to homeowners. Second, it causes home prices to rise relative to the value of similar rentals, causing conversions of rental properties to condos and other imbalances. Thus, many markets have had a net loss of rental housing stock.
As a result of this imbalance of demand related to ownership incentives, developers have less incentive to build for long-term holding since it is more profitable selling condos instead of rentals. Because condo developers will not be responsible for maintenance over the life-cycle of the property, they tend to care less about durability and energy-efficiency than construction cost. In the long run, the homeowner pays the added costs of the higher-maintenance, less-efficient home.
Repealing the deduction will be an uphill battle. Homeowners are a reliable voting block, so pandering to them usually pays off for politicians. Repealing the deduction would probably drive home values down further, so it will probably have to be tabled until the credit markets recover.