They Raised My Property Taxes!!

Just over 2K here in southwest WI. One story ranch home, nothing fancy. City lot, but outside the city. If you live in WI, and your home is attached to the ground, you will get socked. If you own land and you put it into some type of "forest management" you can pay very little, but throw a cabin on, and whamo. You might as well build it on wheels. In our county you can look up anyones property taxes by name/address/etc. I found a dude who pays over 120,000/year...but then if you live in a 5.5 million dollar home...........

Where does it end?

IL provides money to schools based on attendance. If VT does the same, homeschooling = no money from the state hence the increase in property taxes??

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In New Hampshire, where there is no state income tax or sales tax, the property taxes are INSANE- 80% of which go to school funding.

The taxes on my 3.5 acres +80 year old house + two garages was almost $6,000. per year by the time i managed to sell- 10 months listed thru realtor.

Previous poster was so right that we do not really own our properties- if you cannot cough up whatever arbitrary highway robbery property tax your town can think up, your place is taken from you.

Where can we go and what can we do??????

We have 2 properties:

Oklahoma: 140 acres, 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2500 sq ft ranch, approx 35 yrs old=$147 yr.

Michigan: 5 acres,falling down not habitable house=$1200 yr.

We were told the taxes are so high because Montmorency County has so much state owned land that the state doesn't pay taxes on, everyone else has to make up the difference. Do you think the state will get off any of that land...NO, they won't. It is so bad that people that have lived there all their lives can't afford to live there anymore. The Real Estate people have told everyone that they can get you hundreds of thousands of dollars for their places from people from Detroit and Ohio. Those people have good jobs and can pay the taxes. TPTB have run/kept out any kind of job producing entities for so long people are getting discouraged and leaving.

When the main factory left in the eighties many people made an exodus to Palestine TX to the WalMart warehouse. The locals were calling Palestine Little Atlanta.

What is the answer?

Yankee

Low property taxes are just a temporary situation, it will change very soon. Those that are laughing now will be crying in the future especially if they think their taxes won't go up.

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"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self confidence"
Robert Frost

I'm curious, in those states with low property taxes, what is the schedule for income, sales, and vehicle taxes? We don't have a sales tax in Oregon, but high income and property taxes. Even at that, it varies wildly from county to county. A populated county like Multnomah (where Portland is located), my acreage and house would probably command around 5-6K a year. One county over, where I live, it's 1/5th that rate. I would think that state and county services still need to be paid, so even if you have a low property tax, you're getting hit somewhere else.

Well, supposedly, but then again, they aren't paying to educate that student, right? However, it's amazing how much a school gets per student. It averages over $7000k nationwide per student! I am pretty sure I didn't spend $7000 to homeschool my 4 kids from birth through high school, even including all the cool stuff I bought like microscopes and museum memberships..... I wouldn't complain if I actually believed that students attending public schools are getting a good education, but test scores say different. I'm currently tutoring a boy who "gradulated" last spring, yet reads and does math at about the 4th grade level. However, he was a star athlete, so.. it was in the school's best interest to keep passing him along. Now he can't get into college even though he was offered a scholarship. It's sad.

Here in Ohio we are around 8 - 9K per student, but we have a voucher system. (that's our school district... but I think Cleveland it's like 14K a student, but I am not sure on that)

If the kid goes to a charter school (state approved) that school gets the money.

So, we "homeschool" through a charter school. The system is Ohio Virtual Academy. We started our daughter in Kindergarten with it, sent her (on purpose) to public school for 1 and 2 grade. While she was in 2 last year, we started our son on K with it, and this year we have both the older ones 1 and 3 grade doing it at home. My wife has decided she like it a LOT better than the public school, although our local school IS a good school system and was rated "excellent" by the state.

I really like the charter/voucher system, it's been a great blessing to us.

With the voucher system, that tax money, going to the charter school, provide us with a computer, all the books, and almost all the supplies (like clay, teaching helps and illustrations, etc.) at no cost (other than the taxes I pay) to us.

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So what's the catch? Traditional homeschoolers seem to lobby against such programs, sure that there's some hook, like, the local school controls your curriculum choices. I'd be all for it, if it meant the parent could control what they used, in terms of materials.

They still have buildings to maintain, pensions to pay, buses to run etc. The K-8 district my daughters attended spent less per student than the state average (which is bogus number in states that have large cities like Chicago) BUT 1/3 of the cost per student was transportation. I've never had issue with the amount of money spent on students as our schools are good. But some day they won't be as slum houses are being built due to greed and p*** poor planning. I call them eco-terrorists and suffice it to say there are more than enough stupid people to believe that the greedy developers that additional residents do not equal higher costs for muncipalities (police, fire, etc). But as I always say, an animal does not defecate where it sleeps which is also true of developers. And I get aggravated as I hear nothing but p****** and moaning from co-workers about the schools in the town where we work. When I ask what are you doing to fix the problem, I get a vacuous stare. Easy enough to complain, lots of hard work to make things better.

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Our taxes just went from 1200/yr to 2020/yr. They tell us the increase is temporary....just to pay for the new school ya, right. That's in addition to a 4.5% income tax and 6% sales tax, etc.

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WindyIslandPeeps.com
The air of heaven is that which blows between a horses ears-
Life should be "Little House" meets the "Jetsons"

Yes, 36% is a big hike. My little house (back in the '30s it used to be a chicken coop) on 1/2 acre with a 20x40 shop is $1,605. I have never had any children and I have to pay for the gd mexicans that go to school up the road. I would rather all of my taxes go to the fire department, nearby college, and library.

For 5 acres, a doublewide, a shed, and a 30'X30' barn I paid somewhere around $3000 last year (haven't gotten this years bill yet).

Next year after the house is built it will be about $5000.

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Bob D. in FL

"Good decisions are made from knowledge, not from numbers" - Plato

BobCat Acres - blog.bobcatacres.com
home of Chickens, Ducks, Turkeys, Goats, Sheep, and Bunnies

We pay $18 a year for our 60 acres in Missouri. However, that's more than negated by the amount we pay in personal property and state income taxes. You're gonna pay it somewhere, no free rides left.

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Here in South central PA we pay 1500 on 3,000 sq. ft. house with 2.2 acres,
lot next door we pay 330 a year for 1.75 acres.

It seems some states would be almost impossible to live in and homestead off the land, NH sounds awful!!!

The charter school controls the curriculum. The public school teachers don't like it a bit.

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Some of these property taxes seem incredibly low. I have 42 acres and a new (but small and modest) doublewide and my property taxes are a little over $400 a year. However, I am buying the land on a contract for deed, so the value of the land at the PVA is based on what the previous owner (the current deed holder) gave for it. Once I pay it off and the deed gets in my name, then the value will be recorded for what I paid for it and the taxes will go up substantially. My interest rate on the contract is low, and the taxes are low, so not much incentive for me to pay it off ahead of time. So what you're paying in total property taxes for your area isn't as important as what the tax rate is. There might be particular reasons why others are stating such low annual property taxes besides having low tax rates.

Ours went up 105% in 2006. Yes, you read that right. We did complain, as there had been small increases every year since we bought the property in Jan 2002 and began building our house in July 2002. Our appeal was denied, the reasoning given was "the property was never properly adjusted in value after your occupancy permit was issued" (we built the house ourselves over 15 months). The township would not give us a more manageable increase in taxes over several years, they insisted it had to be adjusted all at once. And then in 2007 they increased us another 3%, even though we had not made any 'improvements' to our property since the assesment in 2006 and there are houses in the neighborhood that have been up for sale for over 18 months!

So our house payment (taxes included in the payment) has gone up by $500 a month compared to what it was in 2005. It's been tough to make up that extra $$ each month.

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Kris
http://thislittleplacehere.blogspot.com/

In California under Prop 13 if your house value drops more than--10%?--you can have the tax reassessed and lowered.

We have sales tax, gas tax, state income tax...

Those 'temporary taxes for the new school' are actually 'assessment districts' affecting only properties within a certain boundary on a map and with a definite expiry date. They really *do* go away at the end of the stated term.

Just a thought, our 16 acres, when purchased in 1988, taxes were about $60 bucks.
The in the early 90's taxes shot up to $1500, and in reading the tax bill, noticed it had been counted as Residential/ recreational @2200 per acre.
Mind you no permanent buildings as of yet.

After sending them a Terra-fly pic and my USDA farm number, they cut it back to 6 acres R/R and the rest flood plain/cropland @ 250 per.
This cut my taxes in half, (of course, I didn't re a refund) but it sure helped.

Soooo.... Check how you land is counted on the tax roles, squeaky wheel etc, etc.........
P.S. I think Zant is bragging, and for good reason.............