America's fastest rising taxes - property taxes CNN/Money

[flygal]

http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/07/pf/taxes/property_taxes_up/index.htm

snip

NEW YORK(CNN/Money) - Roy Downing is angry. Taxes on his Lodi, N.J., home hit $8,000 in 2004, up from $6,000 the year before.

"That's quite a shot in one year," says Downing, chairman of the American Reform Party, which seeks to reduce government spending. "Then, it went up again, $300, this year."

New Jersey homeowners pay the highest property taxes in the country, according to the Tax Foundation, an evaluation based on the latest available Census Bureau figures from 2002. But you don't have to live there to have suffered a big boost in property taxes.

Nationwide, property tax collections rose 7 percent in 2004, to more than $324 billion. Over the past five years, they've climbed 36.6 percent, about 6.4 percent a year


And not ONE single mention of * tax cuts. HELLO AMERICA - WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!!!

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. Now you know what that real estate bubble is good for

REVENUE!!!

[KharmaTrain]

2. Dumb, Dumb and Dumber

So many people though how great it was their property values were increasing until they get latest assessment. Somehow they can't figure that if they're home value doubles, so will the property taxes. Uh oh. And, for many, that's not really doubling since it's only on paper...they'd have to chance a bad housing market to see if they could actually sell for that price.

Add to that all the local taxes that have been tacked on as federal dollars went away and new mandates like NCLB forced districts to do testing yet provided no funding for them.

Many still fail to connect their own state financial troubles with the messes caused by this regime. Their tax cuts to the rich cut the amount states could also collect, thus reducing their revenues. Add to that the exporting of jobs, high energy costs and a increasing costs and I'm amazed anything is getting done these days.

[Old and In the Way]

3. The great con game finally coming home to roost.

Do people really think there's a free lunch? Bush's federal income/estate tax cuts for the rich is being paid by the middle-class with increases on state and local taxes. But, hey, freeps, enjoy that $100 taxcut you got from Bush a few years back. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[H2O Man]

5. Exactly.

My property taxes have sky-rocketed since 2000. I resent it. However, I have neighbors on fixed incomes that not only resent it, but have great difficulty in paying those increases.

[TomClash]

4. This started in New Jersey more than a decade ago

when Christie Whitman cut both the state income tax rate and consequently state aid to local governments. Then localities had to raise revenues to fund the schools. This was the only avenue open to them.