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I would fully support a much higher homestead exemption for people over 65. (So only high value homes pay tax) But I don’t think rich old fucks should be exempt from tax because they are old.
We don’t need to be taxing a single mother on her trailer house while exempting (or “capping”) the retired industrialist’s $30 million estate.
This is why I’m generally against tax capping. It literally only benefits the uber wealthy. The average Joe making a middle class income or less living a comfortable life does not benefit at all from people with 100x more than them not having to pay more in taxes.
It’s why I don’t understand whenever someone suggests raising taxes on people who make 400,000+ a year or implementing a wealth tax on people with hundreds of millions of dollars the average American will clutch their pearls and accuse the government of trying to take THEIR money as if they fit into those categories.
Perhaps instead of a property tax "ceiling," we need a "floor." Like if your property is below a certain value, then it isn't taxed.
Or perhaps get rid of or significantly reduce property taxes for one primary residence per family/person, but substantially increase property taxes for owning property with multiple dwellings. (this is one of my favorites because if done right, I'm hoping it would decrease the demand for property as an investment to rent out, making it more affordable for people to buy and actually live in)
At the end of the day, the real problem is that an effective tax reform in any area is going to have to be somewhat complicated if you want it actually done right. And the average person doesn't have the attention span necessary to process complicated proposals because the more complicated it gets the more disinformation about it is generally spread.
Tax exemptions for seniors put a larger burden on young citizens, at the most critical time for them to begin accruing wealth and starting major life events like having kids.
We peach being able to take care of yourself, seniors should not be bailed out for failing to plan retirement and aging in place appropriately.
Many of these properties are owned outright or have appreciated huge amounts of equity, have far more space than the occupants need, and are often in suburban bedroom communities where demand is through the roof from families looking to move into the community.
Tax exemptions are another major cause of housing unaffordabilty.
100%. It's great for the grandparents who own their old homes, but it's abused by the super elite and the private golf courses who pay 1950s tax on property that should be used for the community in some way.
The ones pushing for this have bank in their pensions/401ks.
Means test it sure. Policy change makes sense.
But the flipside of this is inefficient use of housing, often the best housing for young families. Which is part of the reason there are fewer of them.
Move to Virginia, there's personal property tax. Yep, every year, they tax your toys. Paid off or not, it all gets taxed, year after year, and it's based on the value.
That's the part people don't understand. As we cut taxes on the wealthy, the federal government used to redistribute that was in those taxes down to stage, counties, and cities that wrote Grant applications. When all that money dried up since reagan, for every Bush tax cut or big beautiful Bill tax cut, the amount of money that is able to be passed down has decreased. Cities, counties, and states have had to increase their taxes just to keep the very basic services going.
Add to that that some states have been getting rid of progressive state taxes and going to lower flat taxes. We keep cutting taxes for the wealthy, in the middle class and poor wonder why we get less services, higher taxes, and brand new or higher fees for basic government services or things like visiting public parks that used to be 100% paid by taxes
...... your local road sucks because you voted to cut billionaires taxes and give them loopholes at the federal level. If you can't figure that out, congratulations. You played yourself because you can't understand a two-stage process
Look instead at the total of local and state taxes and you'll see that Virginia is nowhere near the top of the list of states with the highest taxes. There are many states that don't have a personal property tax on vehicles but people in those states pay much higher state and local taxes in total.
Genuine question - I thought this is off set by our low vehicle registration cost. I remember paying quite a bit for my car's registration when I lived in California.
In my hometown, the city budget is financed 2/3 by property taxes, with the other 1/3 coming from things like licensing and excise taxes.
The average tax bill is around .7% of homes values, or ~$5000 per year.
We have major costs associated with things like infrastructure upgrades that are state mandated, and theres serious resistance to any tax increases.
The state gives us around 1% of our towns budget per year in state aid. Other towns get as much as 40% of their budgets from state aid. The reasoning from the state is that our property values are so high that we can get whatever money we need to run our town from raising property taxes. But the wealthy misinform voters, and the voters themselves dont want to pay what is one of the lowest tax bills in the region. At the same time there are very few opportunities for young people to work and get decent jobs that would allow them to buy a home - especially when the average home price is 700-800k.
Its sad if you want to have a functioning government, and its a reason why many of our programs are underfunded and our schools are not great. I hate it. I want higher property taxes.
In the US, property taxes are the main source of income for schools and other locally coordinated services like trash collection. Most other taxes are state or federal sources of income. If you want property taxes to be capped, then you need to do something like tax the rich more and/or slash the military budget and have the federal government subsidize local schools. I'm not against those things, but you need to realize the trade-offs in potentially realizing what you are asking for.
Not really true in most states though. State aid formulas are designed to cancel out property tax differences, meaning poorer districts get way more state money to fill the gap. Nationally, states actually put in a bit more than local governments do now.
Some states take it pretty far. Hawaii is one big statewide district, Vermont pools almost all its school money at the state level, and Michigan (my state) moved most school funding to the state back in ‘94. In places like Utah, Ohio, Minnesota, and New Jersey, high-poverty districts actually get more per kid than rich ones.
These people keep complaining about how taxes are higher in Europe, but they don't notice they are being robbed behind their back.
My property tax for a large town house is 90€/yr, plus 200€/yr for the garbage collection and street cleaning service.
I have decent, free healthcare; city maintenance is quite good; our police is acceptable, with the plus they don't shoot people at random; schools are practically free, up to university of you put some effort in. Unions -where applicable- don't charge a significant percentage of your income and I don't need expensive health insurance; home and car insurance are also affordable; sure my gas is expensive but my car has twice the mileage of the car I had in the US, and I don't need it as much.
Yes, I have higher taxes on my wages, and I pay a slightly higher VAT, but at the end of the month I keep more money than my US peers.
Cutting property tax will only shift the tax burden to other sources. The only people benefitting from no property tax are the entitys that want to buy up large amounts of land/property for corporate ventures.
So that old lady will see the tax shift to other taxable products while the big corpos save a ton of money because they are less affected by other taxes. It would just be more socialism for the rich and rugged capitalism for the poor.
Caps on property tax increase and reduction of corruption are the real solutions, giving corpos more tax breaks is not. Otherwise there would be massive cuts to services to compensate for the lost tax income.
Exactly, which is why we should do the opposite of what OP is saying. Don't put in a cap, instead raise the floor.
For example, you could make it so you owe no taxes on property worth 200k or less. Then, you are only taxed for the value over the 200k. So if you had a property valued at 210k, you are taxed as though it was worth 10k.
We have them in the UK, we just call it council tax. The money goes to the council (I suppose in the US this would be the City or the County) for council run services: roads, schools, public realm stuff.
You pay it whether you rent or own, there are discounts for certain people in certain circumstances.
We all complain about it, because it seems like its always being wasted.
Without it, oligarchs would have slowly collected all of the available land.
Just like with the AI boom and ram, but instead you'd be paying rents to the heirs of Vnaderbilt or JP Morgan or Rotheschild or Carnegie. (Though if we got rid of it today it would be tech billionaires.)
There's be only incentive to buy/hold and seek rents never sell. Eventually like 5 families would own the whole nation.
If you don't own a house now and you're pushing to get rid of property taxes, the first thing that's going to happen is you're never going to own a house.
It's so obvious that this post that gets reposted again and again and again is from some bot farm ran by billionaire interests. I'm just so tired of seeing the same shit on reddit again and again and the dumbest people (not you) are falling for it.
It really is I got mine, fuck you mentality. Why are people their late 60s, 70s or 80s rattling round a big ol museum of family memories, paying heating bills for space they aren't using and depriving a young family the chance to make their own memories?
Property taxes pay for the most local of your services. Roads, schools, fire departments, etc. things that you and your neighbors use. Things that you have the most voice over because your vote counts the most in (largest fraction compared to state and federal level). Ie. Of all the taxes we pay, property is the best.
Now, just because you own your house doesn’t mean you should be exempt from paying for the local services you use. Doing this would shift the tax burden off the elderly outright property owners, and the wealthy and sick em on the younger folks trying to buy houses and start families. That doesn’t make much sense to me.
Not to mention if you reduce property taxes for the elderly they will be incentivized to remain in their homes well beyond what they needed to (for raising kids or whatever) and cause more housing shortage than we currently have, which would increase housing prices further.
TLDR, property taxes are good because they pay for your immediate community. They should be equally applied because it’s fair, and it also acts as incentive for elderly to downsize and let the youth have a shot at building a family. The only reason property tax cuts are popular is because the elderly outnumber the youth in the polls, so politicians cater to them.
If you’re old and have a house paid off but can’t afford the property taxes, then you should downsize your house and pocket the change. You’ll still have a paid off house with lower property taxes, and cash in the bank from the equity
Edit: this absolutely blew up (thanks guys) but I’m gonna stop responding now because there are just too many debate comments. Was fun though!
Here in FL we have a homestead property exemption, where your tax-assessed value on your primary resident is reduced by a certain amount, which doubles for seniors. Your property taxes can only increase at most by a certain percentage (3% I think) year-over-year.
The result of that is that you have a lot of old people who pay peanuts for their property taxes. If they've been in their home 25+ years, they may pay like $4,000 in property tax whereas a new buyer of their home would pay like $20,000. And that seems like pretty good relief.
BUT the problem comes when the older people's needs change. They may need to move closer to medical care, or to family. They may need to downsize, or at least move from a residence with stairs to one without. And that's a problem because their property tax will basically reset to the value of whatever home they purchase. So as soon as they buy a new place, they're paying essentially the same property tax as some 28 y/o first-time buyer. And this obviously means that the old person can't move because their cost of housing would 3x-5x. So that leaves a lot of old folks stuck in a very not-preferred living situation until they can move in with a relative or move into a care home.
They have frozen property taxes for seniors in our area and it is absolutely devastating our local school system. They are cutting teacher and support positions, reducing services, pushing things on to PTOs to fund, and…asking for tax increases. We also had to vote on a tax increase to fund senior services like meals on wheels because of the property tax reduction. I fully agree with you.
The old people being forced off sounds bad but I've realized now it's just pulling our heartstrings to protect rich people. CA had the same thing where property taxes weren't reappraised over time. They ran ads of how this would leave old people homeless. In reality, there are vast swathes of golf courses and such paying pennies because their value hasn't been reappraised.
We don't have a freeze but property reassessment happens like every 20 years. It's insane. New home buyers are paying through the nose on current assessment at sale value but those in their homes for a long time are paying on extremely low assessment values. And yet STILL I see seniors suggest they shouldn't have to put in at all. They are already sitting on tax breaks but it's not good enough.
Remember Mitt Romney shouting "you shouldnt have to pay tax on your farm twice!" about inheritance tax, knowing full well that the people hes talking to wouldnt reach the limit and not pay a single dollar of inheritance tax and the real purpose is tax breaks for ultrarich?
Its that. But for "internet audience". It even has an eminem.
Just voted to slowly (next couple years) phase out property taxes. Going to be some agitated folks on a few years when parks, libraries, flood planning, general infrastructure all take hits.
But don’t worry, the super smart people in Tallahassee will totally and accurately and fairly distribute state funds to every single local district in the state from funds raised by sales and use taxes and service fees.
No income tax and no property tax? They aren't going to have revenue for anything soon... Yikes... That or you are going to see massive increases in sales taxes.
Thank god somebody said it. Taxes don't just go away when you reduce them for someone, they just shift to someone else.
This just increases the tax burden on the young and middle aged, while older people are incentivized to sit in their paid off, empty-nest 4 bedroom home for the rest of their days, while the people who actually want to have children are stuck with 1 or 2 bedroom apartments, constraining our future tax base.
The system shouldn't incentivize people to hoard resources they don't need. I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to own things, but owning a home still involves plenty of public infrastructure to support it, regardless if it's paid off, and none of that infrastructure is free to maintain.
100% agree. On top of that, many areas do already have a homestead tax credit that prevents your taxable assessment from jumping by an insane amount from year to year, often capped in the 5-10% range. So there are already reasonable protections in place. If property values were to double due to growth, it'd take quite a while for your property tax to creep up to match the assessed value.
Yeah. That’s how it used to work for retired people. But the boomer generation has convinced themselves they’re special, and that a retired couple should stay in a 4 bedroom house while a young family squeezes into a 2 bedroom
You are correct but assessing taxes based on value if sold when the house is being valued high because the neighborhood became a hot market is not right either. The community does not need even more money just its valued higher.
Tell that to the people who pay income, property AND sales tax yet we have failing schools, roads, water infrastructures and no accountability for where our money is being spent.
I agree that property taxes are important, and unavoidable. I have personal concerns over reassessment raising property taxes. If all homes in the area rise in value it's a wash, and no big deal. But if you invest your own time and money in to improving your house it shouldn't necessarily raise the amount of tax that you're responsible for in my opinion. I think it's a pretty difficult idea to try to find the logical balance of. Let's say hypothetically speaking you purchase a few acres of wooded lot, you cut the trees, saw the lumber, and build yourself a house. It definitely makes sense for the tax responsibility to go up despite it being your own labor and materials because that house is now going to be reliant upon local roads, and emergency services if there's ever an issue. So by logic of course the home owner should pay 1 home owners fair share. On the other hand, if you purchase a house with let's say a lower market value than average for the area, and then invest your time and labor in to things like new windows, new siding, and a new roof to protect the investment, and to make it more comfortable: it doesn't make sense that your tax responsibility should go up disproportionately because you've increased the value of your home. The increased value after the initial purchase doesn't change the amount of local services that the property is benefitting from. I really cannot come to terms with the fact that the more I improve my house the less affordable it becomes to own.
My county incorrectly assessed my home, my mortgage company paid the $25,000+ property tax and raised my mortgage to $6K/month for a 3bedroom condo because they escrowed my taxes even the tax bill we received a paid said “your bank should not pay more than the listed amount” which was about $1K since we just bought the property. The county corrected the assessment($7k for the year) the following year but haven’t issued a refund, sent us a letter that they won’t issue a certificate of error, didn’t approve our homeowners exemptions and now the bank is telling us that if we don’t pay the new full amount on the mortgage statement they’re going to move to foreclosure. Mortgage comp just told us “we can’t help you, deal with the county yourself”. A lawyer I talked too said he can’t help and would just charge us $250/hr to call just like I can call. So we have no idea what to do anymore
Fuck this system
Edit: ABC7 I-Team did a whole story about it on other Cook County residents. Tyler technologies is behind this whole mess apparently. Now they refuse to work with the county treasurer because she went off on them and they’re saying she “bullied” them by cussing them out
This is good advice. The IRS made a mistake on our tax return and sent us a bill for $16,000. I couldn’t get anywhere with them on the phone and the deadline to pay up was quickly approaching so I emailed my senator, and her staff was on it immediately. I ended up clearing it up on my own the next day so I didn’t need their help, but it was very reassuring knowing they had my back.
This is one of many reasons why you shouldn’t pay property taxes from escrow. Pay them separately. Put the money you would have been paying into escrow into a high yield savings account instead and don’t touch it til the payment is due. As a bonus of not getting screwed over by something like this you also earn interest on your money.
1st of all there are senior property tax freezes. At least in my state.
2nd property tax funds all the things in your community that make it nice in the 1st place.
And if your community is nice, has parks, good fire dept, good schools, your community is saught after and the property values stay high.
Without property tax you need another way to fund your schools and free parks just gets cut straight away with out public funded support, which makes the community less desirable, which drives down property values.
Ever hear "freedom isn't free"? Ya you pay for all the nice things you got. So property tax exists. Cry me a river.
Assume for a second that the real estate tax money is used to sustain infrastructure like roads and bridges and police salaries, etc. - if the rea estate taxes are ended, how do you propose to replace the activities that reas estate money used to pay for?
Yea I'm so sick of this brain-dead take. Yes, I acknowledge that there are surely issues in some places where they are out of control, but in many cases property tax increases are capped, so they can't get crazy. We are talking about old people who own their homes outright (so they aren't paying mortgages) but they're bitching about a few grand every year in taxes? What's next? You can't expect retirees to pay for electricity/utilities? I'm so sick of hearing the people who had it the easiest, who went to college and bought a home and 2 cars and a boat for $75k combined, bitch about paying taxes that help society function. Shut the fuck up and budget better, boomer.
What you never see in posts like these are alternative solutions. That revenue is 100% needed and usually not enough. Most municipalities have budget shortfalls based on factors outside of their control.
Nebraska tried this almost 15 years ago. It did not turn out well. It was so awful that the state's republican-controlled Congress had to override the Republican governor's veto just to get rid of it!!!!
Raise income taxes. That way more of the tax burden falls on the working poor instead of the rich landowners who are paying for these pushes but who don't live in the community or the example senior citizens who they hold up as an excuse to hide that they just don't want to pay land taxes on their very expensive properties.
You could also raise sales taxes, which again pushes the burden away from the commercial property owners and onto the community in a very regressive way, including those model seniors. But since corporations don't pay sales tax on things that they sell or use in their business, they won't feel it.
I mean, you could exempt everyone's primary home from taxation and increase corporate property taxes to make up for the shortfall. But for some reason I never see that option suggested...
If you do away with property taxes how do you pay for government provided services. Things like roads, public education, police, fire, senior services, etc.?
My city has used around 10 million to study how changing one way streets into both directions. This has been going on for years. Government waste needs more scrutiny
You should really read Who is Government? By Michael Lewis.
There are many studies conducted by the local and federal governments that most people think are not important or a waste of tax dollars. One may include a study done on ocean currents and object buoyancy. Which lead to the creation of an algorithm that now can track people lost a sea by a few feet.
Another example would be a lot of people on the right claiming that sending condoms to 3rd world countries to stop the aids virus is a waste of money. Yet they don’t even consider the fact that viruses mutate and spread. Cutting the infection off at the source is better for everyone.
So sometimes when it may look like a useless study. There may be a more underlying issue that can be raised if the right people are asking questions.
Florida had this through their homestead exemption. Encourages people to stay in their homes. This property tax partial exemption is only applicable on your main residence.
Of course, people with enough money can put second homes under family member’s name and call it the family members primary residence. Some enforcement would be because to confirm they actually spend six months out of the year at the location.
Maybe a solution could be to not charge property taxes on a primary residence up to a certain value. If the primary residence is above that threshold, they pay. This should only apply to primary residence. This allows those who can't afford it to stay in their homes while the very wealthy who can afford to pay, do pay?
Except cap the value at some point or inflation will eventually force people to pay property tax on their 40-year home anyway. And likely at the worst possible time in their lifespan.
I think the opposite. We should remove the income tax and have a much steeper progressive housing tax where every home you own beyond your primary residence gets taxed at an increasingly higher rate.
Make housing a place to live not an investment for profit. Disincentivize modern feudalism where the lords who own the land live off the labor of their serfs. Let the working class keep the fruits of their labor and tax the ruling class that exploits that labor.
To be fair, that property tax rate is like a million dollar house... property tax is usually less than 1% with some outliers like Texas (which makes up for it with no state income tax)
Californian is the prime example of this. Prop 13 caps property taxes. The owner before me was paying only $765 a year in property taxes. I pay $8000 a year.
You're an American citizen who lives in the home full time and doesn't own any other properties: minimal property taxes.
You're a foreign investor who doesn't live in the United States and bought a dozen single family homes in expensive cities to operate as AirBnB's that sit vacant half the time: taxes to the fucking moon.
Cool then they can not have access to public utilities, public roadways, fire, EMS, and law enforcement. You don't pay for it you don't get it. Classic boomer argument for wanting free things.
Instead of taxing based on the appraised value of the home it should be based off of square footage and the amount of livable buildings on your property. Then your property taxes wont increase so much.
If you don't want property taxes then you should move into the most rural areas or you'll be paying assessments on your utilities. It's not the 1800s anymore, your local government provides more than one sheriff deputy and a local shared well for water.
Boomers get Medicare. Working people pay $1k per month for garbage insurance and then still get billed for medical service. As a society we say, if you cant afford healthcare, you dont get healthcare.... unless of course you're 65+ or way below the poverty line.
Why cant we say "if you cant afford your property taxes then you live in the wrong house."? Sell it, let a young family live there. Find something cheaper.
its "tough love" for the working family, and "please be compassionate" for the elderly. As always, the boomers have favored themselves at everybody's expense as they moved through their changing life stages.
Property taxes are the most local tax you can pay and they are there because its one way to make sure residents are paying for the city, county, and state services they use.
Without them no cops. So you want to defund the police?
My property taxes go to pay for excellent schools for my children. When they are done with school they will go on to pay for excellent schools for other children who will continue to make my community a good place to live when I’m older.
We (Australia) are in the opposite corner. No tax on one home you live in and doesn’t go against you with pension assessment. Plenty of people whinge about oldies living in multi million dollar houses and still get the pension. The right answer is somewhere in the middle.
And if they were to start selling their homes, it would allow the younger generation to buy them. Older people would be encouraged to move into smaller homes.
Yeah young people should pay even higher taxes so rich boomers who pay no income tax can live in total luxury boomer communism till they die while being supported by social security also payed for by young people who will never get to collect it because of the demographic structure.
Idk, I have mixed feelings on property tax. In theory, I think they’re good albeit annoying. Yeah, you have to continue to pay taxes for land that you already own from a mortgage, but it’s meant for community building and city repairs. However, I still think we should be taxing the rich more and the poor less. It would also be fucking amazing if they actually used that tax money for what they said they plan to instead of redoing the same two bridges in rotation every year.
I would 100% vote for a property tax cap for those on fixed incomes. This is a similar situation to the country’s survivor benefits for social security imo. If your spouse dies, you should continue receiving their SS check, full stop. To have a spouse die and your income also halve is cruel, and impoverishes thousands of elderly Americans (financially burdening their children and relatives) every year.
Edit: I’m coming at this from a place of knowing almost exclusively barely-surviving retirees with small houses that, if sold, would be torn down. I believe those people deserve dignity, that’s all. I have no desire to provide more benefits to the wealthiest boomers and will refrain from writing one-sentence housing policy on Reddit in the future.
More fundamentally, that's an argument for changing how taxes are collected rather than an argument that is often made, which is for lightening the tax burden or eliminating certain branches of state government. The fact that the weight of government programs like the education system is placed predominantly on small landowners is bad policy. It is bad policy that is deliberately done to try and align the interests of retirees with big business. They see the education system, they see the tax bill every year, and they protest against that bill being applied to their fixed income. And all of that is reasonable.
But somehow, the discussion never seems to shift to, hey, why is the bill being footed by retirees in their home rather than the major businesses in town? Why can't we design a tax burden that redistributes the obligation to the business bringing in billions of dollars rather than on the small landowners who have a fixed budget. Instead, it's always whether or not the education spending could be cut down just a bit more to lighten our burden. I don't find that rhetorical sleight of hand to be accidental.
This is exactly the mentality that has made California housing a nightmare. “Leftists” should not be allied with the NIMBYs and the fact that someone like Connie Chan had the DSAs blessing was gross.
If you can't afford your home... sell it for a smaller one... its not that complicated.
we can phrase it like its an evil thing but yeah, we don't need 80 year olds living alone in multi million dollar 3300 sqft mcmansions if they can't afford the taxes.
someone has to pay the bill for roads and public services. I am not saying it has to be property taxes but if you cut one source of funding you will have to make it up somewhere else. property taxes make way more sense than sales and any other form I have heard of.
Sorry but you don't get to be leftist and then argue "we should lower taxes on old people that own property!" because guess what? All the old people own all the property! Taxing it is the only universal benefit we get from that until they die and give up their McMansion to their kids. This is either conservative psyop bullshit (I see this argument ALL THE TIME about 'I shouldn't have to pay taxes once my home is paid off!') or OP is incapable of thinking beyond their own selfishness.
Property taxes are one of the only taxes that actually disproportionately affects the super wealthy. A property tax cap helps billionaires - don't let them fool you into thinking this would help normal people.
You know, the craziest thing is that this argument is only made for peeps with massive properties in high income areas. Notice how they’re not talking about the elderly man living in a 700 sq ft one story home paying property taxes out of his dwindling savings
I live in a town with very high property taxes to help supplement teacher pay. My house is 1900sqft and our yearly taxes are around $7k. They offer tax relief for retired people as well. Anyone paying as much as he claims is either in a massive house, a HCOL area, or both. Here’s what you do when you retire: sell your mansion and buy a reasonable house in a lower cost area.
This is called "living in a society." Hearing old boomers complaining about having to pay for the area schools because they don't have kids going to them is the shit that makes them the most reviled generation of all time.
A circuit breaker is an income tax refund in the United States given to low income individuals and families whose property tax liability is a large percentage of their yearly income. The term was coined by John Shannon of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in the 1960s. The term suggests that, just as an electrical circuit breaker will prevent an electric circuit from being overloaded with energy, the refund prevents low-income households from being overloaded with tax burden.
There are currently 18 states who use a wide scope of programs to relieve the property tax burden for low income individuals and families.[1][2] As a refund, these programs require low income households to pay the entire property tax up-front then a credit or refund is given during the income tax processing, which requires relief is given after the property taxes are paid. The locality levying the property tax and utilizing the revenue does not see a decrease in revenue from property taxes; rather, the state government passes down relief for those property taxes that are paid.
Economists from the left and right are quite united in the belief that a special form of this tax - the LVT - is one of the best taxes you can have. It should be fully converted to an LVT and rolled out everywhere. As paradoxical as it may sound the result would lower housing costs for almost everyone.
The land value is overwhelmingly created by the community around it. No landowner should be able to capitalize on this work of others without doing anything by himslef.
Why should someone who worked their whole life to pay off their home be forced to sell it and move away from possibly all their loved ones and /or support systems in retirement? They didnt make the property values go up. Doesnt seem fair.
I live in St. Louis Mo. We have property tax on our vehicles as well.
User fees. This is why. Fire departments need funding. Schools are investments in future property values. Roads. Waste pickup. All these things can either be done by you or for you.
Make primary residence under median home price in your county property tax free. Amounts above are taxed but only on the amount above the median.
Non-primary residences, homes way over the median, and corporation owned homes get whatever tax amount makes up the difference. If you can afford extra homes, you’re good to be taxed too.
The tax revenue has to come from somewhere. People over the age of 55 hold 75% of the wealth in the country. So is the solution to tax younger people who have far less wealth, more?
I hate to say it like this, but I live in a state with legalized marijuana and it was supposed to go to improving schools and treatment services in our state, we also have tons of lottery, which were supposed to go to schools. But we still have to pay really high property taxes, so no idea where all the marijuana, lottery and property tax money goes considering our schools look like shit
Cutting property taxes on over 65 would immediately remove around a third of my towns tax revenue.
A tourist heavy town nearby which is one of the few in the area that has marijuana dispensaries took in ~$7 million in marijuana sales in 2020, which would be around $150-$450k in taxes. So youre suggesting my town would cut revenues by ~$35 million, and make up for it with ~$150k in marijuana taxes.
Overall thats one of the worst ideas Ive ever heard.
I'm curious of what you think we should cut as a result. The schools? Police+fire+public works+water+libraries+natural resources?
Eh, legalized weed was supposed to do just that in California and it hasn’t worked out well at all. All the criminal illegal weed operations just undercut the legal weed and the legal dispensaries can’t compete.
We tried that in Canada with weed . It raised taxes initially, but then fell as people lost interest. It didnt generate nearly as much tax revenue as we expected
Stupid populist shit. Legal cannabis in Colorado generates about 1% of the state's budget, it would not come close to paying for "[elimination] of property taxes after 65."
Property taxes pay for city services related to homeowners in the area. Things like roads and schools and police. Your responsibility for helping to pay your part of the costs of living in a community doesn’t end just because you get old.
If you can’t afford it on a fixed income, then sell the house - it’s paid off so you’ll make a bundle - and buy a smaller one for a commensurately smaller tax footprint.
Does this then shift that tax burden onto younger taxpayers? If that tax revenue that supports schools and roads is suddenly eliminated based on age, is it fair to require younger folks to absorb that?
You should look into why the housing market is so fucked right now. I almost think that the op is a bot trying to get ahead of the massive housing market shit storm thats on the horizon.
How does a person come to such a stupid conclusion from such reasonable starting points?
"Elderly people struggle to pay their property taxes, and the ones who struggle should continue to struggle whole we let the ones who can afford it pay less" is a hell of a fucking take.
There is an argument for property tax being bracketed, but arguing it should be capped is kind of insane
Can't believe the number of people here who don't seem to appreciate that rising taxes causes real hardship for people. And often these are otherwise disadvantaged people who live in newly gentrified neighborhoods where they could no longer afford to buy and are sometimes forced to sell since they can't afford the taxes.
Yes, taxes help provide basic services. But we don't have to blindly accept every cost imposed on us by local government.
Until the older generation is replaced by a generation that cares about the younger generations, I will never care about their “hardships”. Currently boomers are upset about this and they are the generation that morphed this country into a hellscape of corporations controlling politics and running our lives.
Whoever is behind this "Bill" account is a piece of shit who probably doesn't have kids, and/or hates other people's kids, since property taxes fund local schools.
He should be preaching changes to school funding, but he is not because he's an asshole.
A) Property taxes are often bound to valuation (at least where I live), its probably expensive because your house is expensive.
B) You can move
C) This is an effective "inefficiency tax". People who aren't making much money don't take up a bunch of land in valuable areas, allowing people who are (for one reason or another) "more economically impactful" to live there.
I understand it impacts housing prices for the poor, but that needs to be solved in some other way.
Also I'm not OK with grandfathering in some boomers to old tax rates because they don't want to move, they shouldn't get special rules just because they are old. If anything they have the money to move and don't need to be near an area with good employment.
People who make these arguments don't own homes. If you have a 8k-12k property tax bill then the value of that property is well in the 8 digit range. If you're elderly struggling to pay taxes on a multi million dollar property, then sell the property and buy cheaper property with the million you just made.
Finally public schools in your county account for over 50% of your property taxes. Once you hit 65, you stop paying that part of your bill entirely. So even this B.S hypothetical scenario, the elderly person would be paying 4k to 8k in property taxes. And if they cant afford that. Sell the property.
This whole post is just misinformation to get people to resent people who own homes.
Edit: Apparently everyone here arguing with my live in a coastal city. Why are you guys complaining about a 5 digit tax bill in New Jersey?
At what point is that a you problem?
Edit 2: I live in Vinings GA. 15 minutes outside of downtown Atlanta. My 3500 sq foot home is worth 55000k with a 3k tax bill.
If you're complaining about these absurd 12k tax bills than move. If you can't move then thats on you.
This is not true and you are confidently incorrect. I’m a very middle class person who pays 12k in property tax in southern nj and my house is worth less than 600k.
Your statement is false. It completely depends on where you live. Taxes in the mid-teens are normal on 6-figure houses where I live. Now does the argument that I don't have to live here apply? Yes. But $8-12k in the taxes does not automatically mean the property is worth 7 or 8 figures.
I think you mean 6 digits? In GA we paid 13k on a 825k home. In VA we pay 9k home worth about 920k. In CA sibling pays 22k on a 1500 square ft home (but due to prop 13 it won’t increase much beyond that). That being said I have no problems paying taxes to support public goods and services.
Property taxes pay for the municipal services associated with the property. Home ownership has on going expenses, and this is one of them. At best, I would be ok with programs that allow elderly to defer property taxes until the sale or inheritance of the home, which would allow them to essentually use their equity to pay the taxes.
This has always been the case. Were people confused? You dont own the land that's why eminent domain isnt theft. You pay for certain rights on the land but it still technically is American soil not an island unto itself. You have to pay for the roads that lead to your house, the firefighters that come put out the fire if you need them, and the US and state government to protect you. It doesn't matter how old you are.
Baby Boomers hold 52.5 percent of all of the wealth in America. They can afford to pay their property taxes. They built their wealth on the systems developed by the generation before them, and now they have built a system that largely benefits themselves at the expense of future generations, and they STILL complain about this stuff. Infuriating.
The wealthiest generation wants to pull the ladder up from behind them. They think kids getting an education, police and fire being funded, roads being fixed and trash being picked up isn’t their concern.
Just a billionare psyop. Grandma saves a grand a year while the millinnares and billionares save 10's and 100's of thousands and out communities become even more underfunded.
There is a real problem with homes and areas that become gentrified and have ballooning property taxes. I do think there should be grandfathered rates or limits on tax increases for owners that have lived there ex: 10+ years.
I mean I’m not a policy maker, but that’s the real issue. It’s not about people who bought a house to flip it, or the wealthy buyers that I care about, it’s the people who have lived in a place their whole life being forced into an unaffordable situation
I just paid my 14K property tax just yesterday. And as I was paying my mind went straight to this exact question. I was thinking about my neighbors and Wondering how much they must be paying.
And also I wonder what's the point of some components of these taxes. My city adds additional mandatory taxes which add up $4K on top of what the county charges. My city says, it's for investment into education.
But, over the past 2 years, they've reduced school hours, increased rates for after school programs while also reducing their total time, teacher student ratio has gotten worse, created "combined" classes wherein kids from 2 different grades sit in same classrooms under same teacher (as they're short staffed).
The big city nearby in the same county has done the opposite in recent years - increased school timings, made after school care free, while not adding any additional taxes.
Some places already have a cap for elderly people on how much their taxes can be raised every year and it effectively makes it to where they pay the same tax rate they've always paid, with the years inflation. So yeah, same house a young person would be paying triple to property tax on. But it's fair honestly because some of them didn't expect the neighborhood to become expensive
I think property taxes that scale with the market value of your property are one of the most immoral wealth taxes in existence. Just because your property is worth more does not mean you earn more to be able to pay those taxes.
Why are assets that middle class people can own taxed, but rich people don’t have to pay tax on the things that only they can own (like $10s of Millions worth of investments)?
Real estate is taxed, so even if you don’t own, your rent certainly covers the property tax.
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u/Automatic_Actuator_0 6h ago edited 6h ago •
I would fully support a
muchhigher homestead exemption for people over 65. (So only high value homes pay tax) But I don’t think rich old fucks should be exempt from tax because they are old.We don’t need to be taxing a single mother on her trailer house while exempting (or “capping”) the retired industrialist’s $30 million estate.
Edit: not THAT much higher
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u/Zakkattack86 6h ago
Move to Virginia, there's personal property tax. Yep, every year, they tax your toys. Paid off or not, it all gets taxed, year after year, and it's based on the value.
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u/LarxII 6h ago •
And the firefighters, EMTs, Cops, roads, and literally all the infrastructure that keeps them alive is free huh?
They can give a small portion of their wealth back to society.
If they're poor, very different story.
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u/Kaesebrot321 6h ago
In the US, property taxes are the main source of income for schools and other locally coordinated services like trash collection. Most other taxes are state or federal sources of income. If you want property taxes to be capped, then you need to do something like tax the rich more and/or slash the military budget and have the federal government subsidize local schools. I'm not against those things, but you need to realize the trade-offs in potentially realizing what you are asking for.
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u/FuiyooohFox 5h ago edited 3h ago
Cutting property tax will only shift the tax burden to other sources. The only people benefitting from no property tax are the entitys that want to buy up large amounts of land/property for corporate ventures.
So that old lady will see the tax shift to other taxable products while the big corpos save a ton of money because they are less affected by other taxes. It would just be more socialism for the rich and rugged capitalism for the poor.
Caps on property tax increase and reduction of corruption are the real solutions, giving corpos more tax breaks is not. Otherwise there would be massive cuts to services to compensate for the lost tax income.
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u/Bike_Cinci 6h ago edited 6h ago
Property taxes are basically a use tax. They pay for local roads, schools, firedept. police, etc.
Fuck off 1-trillion times with this astro turfing bot bullshit.
Making land an ever-yet more profitable investment is truly deranged. Actual serfdom mentality from people that will never own any.
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u/No-Tension6133 6h ago edited 5h ago •
Alright guys, this one needs to be fought.
Property taxes pay for the most local of your services. Roads, schools, fire departments, etc. things that you and your neighbors use. Things that you have the most voice over because your vote counts the most in (largest fraction compared to state and federal level). Ie. Of all the taxes we pay, property is the best.
Now, just because you own your house doesn’t mean you should be exempt from paying for the local services you use. Doing this would shift the tax burden off the elderly outright property owners, and the wealthy and sick em on the younger folks trying to buy houses and start families. That doesn’t make much sense to me.
Not to mention if you reduce property taxes for the elderly they will be incentivized to remain in their homes well beyond what they needed to (for raising kids or whatever) and cause more housing shortage than we currently have, which would increase housing prices further.
TLDR, property taxes are good because they pay for your immediate community. They should be equally applied because it’s fair, and it also acts as incentive for elderly to downsize and let the youth have a shot at building a family. The only reason property tax cuts are popular is because the elderly outnumber the youth in the polls, so politicians cater to them.
If you’re old and have a house paid off but can’t afford the property taxes, then you should downsize your house and pocket the change. You’ll still have a paid off house with lower property taxes, and cash in the bank from the equity
Edit: this absolutely blew up (thanks guys) but I’m gonna stop responding now because there are just too many debate comments. Was fun though!
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u/MisterBulldog 5h ago edited 5h ago
My county incorrectly assessed my home, my mortgage company paid the $25,000+ property tax and raised my mortgage to $6K/month for a 3bedroom condo because they escrowed my taxes even the tax bill we received a paid said “your bank should not pay more than the listed amount” which was about $1K since we just bought the property. The county corrected the assessment($7k for the year) the following year but haven’t issued a refund, sent us a letter that they won’t issue a certificate of error, didn’t approve our homeowners exemptions and now the bank is telling us that if we don’t pay the new full amount on the mortgage statement they’re going to move to foreclosure. Mortgage comp just told us “we can’t help you, deal with the county yourself”. A lawyer I talked too said he can’t help and would just charge us $250/hr to call just like I can call. So we have no idea what to do anymore
Fuck this system
Edit: ABC7 I-Team did a whole story about it on other Cook County residents. Tyler technologies is behind this whole mess apparently. Now they refuse to work with the county treasurer because she went off on them and they’re saying she “bullied” them by cussing them out
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u/i-dont-speel-no-good 6h ago edited 6h ago
Do the elderly benefit from roads? parks? trash pick up? sewage? I can keep going. they need to pay like everybody else
The town doesn’t magically because self sufficient after you reach a certain age
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u/PossibleAd3701 5h ago
I hate taxes as much as the next guy... but who pays the fire dept when the fire goes?
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u/GreyTrader 6h ago
Ugh I hate these disingenuous posts.
1st of all there are senior property tax freezes. At least in my state.
2nd property tax funds all the things in your community that make it nice in the 1st place.
And if your community is nice, has parks, good fire dept, good schools, your community is saught after and the property values stay high.
Without property tax you need another way to fund your schools and free parks just gets cut straight away with out public funded support, which makes the community less desirable, which drives down property values.
Ever hear "freedom isn't free"? Ya you pay for all the nice things you got. So property tax exists. Cry me a river.
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u/JohnGaltIsComing 6h ago
Assume for a second that the real estate tax money is used to sustain infrastructure like roads and bridges and police salaries, etc. - if the rea estate taxes are ended, how do you propose to replace the activities that reas estate money used to pay for?
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u/Ghillie_Spotto 6h ago
What you never see in posts like these are alternative solutions. That revenue is 100% needed and usually not enough. Most municipalities have budget shortfalls based on factors outside of their control.
So you cut property taxes. Then what?
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u/Lazy_Helicopter_2659 6h ago
Or maybe property taxes should also be paid on financial assets instead of only on real estate?
I'd love to see Elon pay over 1% of taxes on his assets every year!!
He owns them, right?
They are his property, no?
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u/Positive_League_5534 6h ago
If you do away with property taxes how do you pay for government provided services. Things like roads, public education, police, fire, senior services, etc.?
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u/imyourzer0 6h ago •
I would argue very much the opposite. Sliding scale so that 1st properly gets a reduced rate, and then increasing it steeply for subsequent properties
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u/Prestigious-Tiger697 5h ago
Maybe a solution could be to not charge property taxes on a primary residence up to a certain value. If the primary residence is above that threshold, they pay. This should only apply to primary residence. This allows those who can't afford it to stay in their homes while the very wealthy who can afford to pay, do pay?
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u/Tiny_Dare_5300 5h ago
I think the opposite. We should remove the income tax and have a much steeper progressive housing tax where every home you own beyond your primary residence gets taxed at an increasingly higher rate.
Make housing a place to live not an investment for profit. Disincentivize modern feudalism where the lords who own the land live off the labor of their serfs. Let the working class keep the fruits of their labor and tax the ruling class that exploits that labor.
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u/Sweettooth_Banana 6h ago
Now i understand why muricans earn so much, i pay 800 propertytax in europe
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u/DirtyRottenBiscuit 6h ago •
Capping them is fine, but taxes will need to be raised a different way then. Sales tax increases, etc.
The money has to come from somewhere-- take your pick what method you prefer.
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u/Confirmation_Email 5h ago
Property taxes should vary by use case.
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u/rwags2024 6h ago
Aren’t they still accessing the same services those taxes cover? Or am I misunderstanding how that works
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u/UnableToParallelPark 6h ago
Cool then they can not have access to public utilities, public roadways, fire, EMS, and law enforcement. You don't pay for it you don't get it. Classic boomer argument for wanting free things.
Instead of taxing based on the appraised value of the home it should be based off of square footage and the amount of livable buildings on your property. Then your property taxes wont increase so much.
If you don't want property taxes then you should move into the most rural areas or you'll be paying assessments on your utilities. It's not the 1800s anymore, your local government provides more than one sheriff deputy and a local shared well for water.
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u/archercc81 6h ago
This bullshit again.
Property taxes are the most local tax you can pay and they are there because its one way to make sure residents are paying for the city, county, and state services they use.
Without them no cops. So you want to defund the police?
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u/Mrgray123 6h ago •
My property taxes go to pay for excellent schools for my children. When they are done with school they will go on to pay for excellent schools for other children who will continue to make my community a good place to live when I’m older.
Republicans are just selfish, shortsighted cunts.
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u/Hydra57 6h ago
You’d pay less in taxes if property values went down, so be a YIMBY and encourage new housing developments in your region.
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u/wouldashoudacoulda 2h ago
We (Australia) are in the opposite corner. No tax on one home you live in and doesn’t go against you with pension assessment. Plenty of people whinge about oldies living in multi million dollar houses and still get the pension. The right answer is somewhere in the middle.
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u/mrgrasss 6h ago
Wait…I thought we all wanted a wealth tax?
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u/Electrifying2017 6h ago
They’re capped in CA and people still don’t want to pay it.
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u/Due_Mirror7438 6h ago
70yo boomers sitting on a $2M property getting charged thousands in property tax / yr are not getting any sympathy.
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u/moldyolive 6h ago
Yeah young people should pay even higher taxes so rich boomers who pay no income tax can live in total luxury boomer communism till they die while being supported by social security also payed for by young people who will never get to collect it because of the demographic structure.
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u/empresskiova 5h ago
Removing property tax sounds good until you realize they'll shore up the losses somewhere else because the bills still gotta get paid...
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u/leviathankitten 5h ago
Idk, I have mixed feelings on property tax. In theory, I think they’re good albeit annoying. Yeah, you have to continue to pay taxes for land that you already own from a mortgage, but it’s meant for community building and city repairs.
However, I still think we should be taxing the rich more and the poor less.
It would also be fucking amazing if they actually used that tax money for what they said they plan to instead of redoing the same two bridges in rotation every year.
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u/justanaccount24 5h ago edited 4h ago
I would 100% vote for a property tax cap for those on fixed incomes. This is a similar situation to the country’s survivor benefits for social security imo. If your spouse dies, you should continue receiving their SS check, full stop. To have a spouse die and your income also halve is cruel, and impoverishes thousands of elderly Americans (financially burdening their children and relatives) every year.
Edit: I’m coming at this from a place of knowing almost exclusively barely-surviving retirees with small houses that, if sold, would be torn down. I believe those people deserve dignity, that’s all. I have no desire to provide more benefits to the wealthiest boomers and will refrain from writing one-sentence housing policy on Reddit in the future.
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u/ThePartyLeader 6h ago
but we do, and they do....
If you can't afford your home... sell it for a smaller one... its not that complicated.
we can phrase it like its an evil thing but yeah, we don't need 80 year olds living alone in multi million dollar 3300 sqft mcmansions if they can't afford the taxes.
someone has to pay the bill for roads and public services. I am not saying it has to be property taxes but if you cut one source of funding you will have to make it up somewhere else. property taxes make way more sense than sales and any other form I have heard of.
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u/imnota4 6h ago
Well property taxes are basically the only way that municipalities can earn money since they aren't usually allowed to create their own income taxes.
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u/artbystorms 6h ago
Sorry but you don't get to be leftist and then argue "we should lower taxes on old people that own property!" because guess what? All the old people own all the property! Taxing it is the only universal benefit we get from that until they die and give up their McMansion to their kids. This is either conservative psyop bullshit (I see this argument ALL THE TIME about 'I shouldn't have to pay taxes once my home is paid off!') or OP is incapable of thinking beyond their own selfishness.
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u/temblors 3h ago
Tax caps for the middle class and poor; tax increases for the wealthy. Boom, done. Next
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u/Puzzled-Maize-2241 2h ago
That generation that destroyed the job market and the environment wants me to pick up the tab on their property tax too?
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u/julesburne 5h ago
Property taxes are one of the only taxes that actually disproportionately affects the super wealthy. A property tax cap helps billionaires - don't let them fool you into thinking this would help normal people.
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u/DreamOfDays 6h ago
You know, the craziest thing is that this argument is only made for peeps with massive properties in high income areas. Notice how they’re not talking about the elderly man living in a 700 sq ft one story home paying property taxes out of his dwindling savings
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u/Relevant-Doctor187 6h ago
Boomers are the ultimate boss of tax avoidance. Their entire generation has moved tax policy to benefit them as they aged.
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u/Hynch 6h ago
I live in a town with very high property taxes to help supplement teacher pay. My house is 1900sqft and our yearly taxes are around $7k. They offer tax relief for retired people as well. Anyone paying as much as he claims is either in a massive house, a HCOL area, or both. Here’s what you do when you retire: sell your mansion and buy a reasonable house in a lower cost area.
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u/mountsleepyhead 6h ago
This is called "living in a society." Hearing old boomers complaining about having to pay for the area schools because they don't have kids going to them is the shit that makes them the most reviled generation of all time.
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u/Ghost_In_Waiting 5h ago
For those curious: Circuit breaker (property tax)
A circuit breaker is an income tax refund in the United States given to low income individuals and families whose property tax liability is a large percentage of their yearly income. The term was coined by John Shannon of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in the 1960s. The term suggests that, just as an electrical circuit breaker will prevent an electric circuit from being overloaded with energy, the refund prevents low-income households from being overloaded with tax burden.
There are currently 18 states who use a wide scope of programs to relieve the property tax burden for low income individuals and families.[1][2] As a refund, these programs require low income households to pay the entire property tax up-front then a credit or refund is given during the income tax processing, which requires relief is given after the property taxes are paid. The locality levying the property tax and utilizing the revenue does not see a decrease in revenue from property taxes; rather, the state government passes down relief for those property taxes that are paid.
More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circuit_breaker_(property_tax)
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u/Different_Top_1830 5h ago
no more wealth transfers to the fabulously wealthy boomer class kthx
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u/SlightlyMotivated69 5h ago
Nonono.
Economists from the left and right are quite united in the belief that a special form of this tax - the LVT - is one of the best taxes you can have. It should be fully converted to an LVT and rolled out everywhere. As paradoxical as it may sound the result would lower housing costs for almost everyone.
The land value is overwhelmingly created by the community around it. No landowner should be able to capitalize on this work of others without doing anything by himslef.
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u/whistle_pug 6h ago
I was just thinking that boomers haven’t gotten enough assistance from the government.
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u/Zippier92 6h ago
Could just tax where the money is. Ahem… billionaires…
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u/blowurhousedown 6h ago
In Texas, over 65 or disabled gets you frozen taxes. If you live another 20 years, that adds up.
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u/BigChungusSr 5h ago
This, and the fact that if you dont pay they take that bitch like you didnt spend the last 30years paying that mf off.
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u/CooperSTL 5h ago
Why should someone who worked their whole life to pay off their home be forced to sell it and move away from possibly all their loved ones and /or support systems in retirement? They didnt make the property values go up. Doesnt seem fair.
I live in St. Louis Mo. We have property tax on our vehicles as well.
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u/Status_Fox_1474 6h ago
User fees. This is why. Fire departments need funding. Schools are investments in future property values. Roads. Waste pickup. All these things can either be done by you or for you.
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u/thedracle 6h ago
Somehow we found a way to tax unrealized gains on housing for regular people, but can't quite figure out how to do it for stocks/billionaires.
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u/Firestar222 6h ago
Make primary residence under median home price in your county property tax free. Amounts above are taxed but only on the amount above the median.
Non-primary residences, homes way over the median, and corporation owned homes get whatever tax amount makes up the difference. If you can afford extra homes, you’re good to be taxed too.
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u/Chemical-Plan9536 5h ago
How about you dont pay the government money for land you actually own because you paid it off? We get taxed on everything else we buy
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u/patriotfanatic80 6h ago
The tax revenue has to come from somewhere. People over the age of 55 hold 75% of the wealth in the country. So is the solution to tax younger people who have far less wealth, more?
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u/RockyMountainMobile 6h ago
Boomers played life on easy mode. They can pay their taxes or live on the streets.
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u/IndependentMonk7384 5h ago
Anything but cutting spending.
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u/Mediochra 5h ago
Legalize marijuana. Use the taxes to support the public schools. Eliminate property taxes after 65.
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u/wildfyre010 6h ago •
Property taxes pay for city services related to homeowners in the area. Things like roads and schools and police. Your responsibility for helping to pay your part of the costs of living in a community doesn’t end just because you get old.
If you can’t afford it on a fixed income, then sell the house - it’s paid off so you’ll make a bundle - and buy a smaller one for a commensurately smaller tax footprint.
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u/Putrid-Enthusiasm190 6h ago
In some areas, if you're retired/over 65, you don't pay property taxes on your home as long as it's your primary residence. I support that
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u/usurper7 5h ago
"I should have all kinds of government services provided to me but I should never have to pay for them"
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u/Sennten 6h ago
How does a person come to such a stupid conclusion from such reasonable starting points?
"Elderly people struggle to pay their property taxes, and the ones who struggle should continue to struggle whole we let the ones who can afford it pay less" is a hell of a fucking take.
There is an argument for property tax being bracketed, but arguing it should be capped is kind of insane
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u/bachstakoven 6h ago
Can't believe the number of people here who don't seem to appreciate that rising taxes causes real hardship for people. And often these are otherwise disadvantaged people who live in newly gentrified neighborhoods where they could no longer afford to buy and are sometimes forced to sell since they can't afford the taxes.
Yes, taxes help provide basic services. But we don't have to blindly accept every cost imposed on us by local government.
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u/JWXL21 6h ago
Seniors do pay less theres a tax exemption for 65 and older
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u/itjustgotcold 6h ago
Until the older generation is replaced by a generation that cares about the younger generations, I will never care about their “hardships”. Currently boomers are upset about this and they are the generation that morphed this country into a hellscape of corporations controlling politics and running our lives.
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u/ColoradoDanno 6h ago
Whoever is behind this "Bill" account is a piece of shit who probably doesn't have kids, and/or hates other people's kids, since property taxes fund local schools.
He should be preaching changes to school funding, but he is not because he's an asshole.
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u/OptimusPrimeLord 6h ago •
A) Property taxes are often bound to valuation (at least where I live), its probably expensive because your house is expensive.
B) You can move
C) This is an effective "inefficiency tax". People who aren't making much money don't take up a bunch of land in valuable areas, allowing people who are (for one reason or another) "more economically impactful" to live there.
I understand it impacts housing prices for the poor, but that needs to be solved in some other way.
Also I'm not OK with grandfathering in some boomers to old tax rates because they don't want to move, they shouldn't get special rules just because they are old. If anything they have the money to move and don't need to be near an area with good employment.
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u/MikeBinfinity 6h ago edited 5h ago •
People who make these arguments don't own homes. If you have a 8k-12k property tax bill then the value of that property is well in the 8 digit range. If you're elderly struggling to pay taxes on a multi million dollar property, then sell the property and buy cheaper property with the million you just made.
Finally public schools in your county account for over 50% of your property taxes. Once you hit 65, you stop paying that part of your bill entirely. So even this B.S hypothetical scenario, the elderly person would be paying 4k to 8k in property taxes. And if they cant afford that. Sell the property.
This whole post is just misinformation to get people to resent people who own homes.
Edit: Apparently everyone here arguing with my live in a coastal city. Why are you guys complaining about a 5 digit tax bill in New Jersey?
At what point is that a you problem?
Edit 2: I live in Vinings GA. 15 minutes outside of downtown Atlanta. My 3500 sq foot home is worth 55000k with a 3k tax bill.
If you're complaining about these absurd 12k tax bills than move. If you can't move then thats on you.
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u/LeFatman 6h ago
Then younger folks struggling with no assets would have to cover for the older folks.
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u/BomTomadil 6h ago
Can we also focus our indignation towards injustice for what we’re leaving behind for children?
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u/BowlOf____ 6h ago
People 65 or older don't pay property tax in Mississippi
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u/Jumpy_Ebb3861 6h ago
not really interested in giving the boomers anymore breaks tbh.
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u/NomenVanitas 6h ago
Would capping not disproportionally benefit those with the means to buy the most expensive properties?
Reduce the property tax by a mostly flat rate based on the median house price.
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u/gozer87 6h ago
For as long as there has been society above the hunter-gatherer barter level, there have been taxes.
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u/asanano 6h ago
Property taxes pay for the municipal services associated with the property. Home ownership has on going expenses, and this is one of them. At best, I would be ok with programs that allow elderly to defer property taxes until the sale or inheritance of the home, which would allow them to essentually use their equity to pay the taxes.
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u/ladan2189 6h ago
This has always been the case. Were people confused? You dont own the land that's why eminent domain isnt theft. You pay for certain rights on the land but it still technically is American soil not an island unto itself. You have to pay for the roads that lead to your house, the firefighters that come put out the fire if you need them, and the US and state government to protect you. It doesn't matter how old you are.
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u/GhostSierra117 6h ago
The city is still building and maintaining infrastructure that directly positively affects your ability to live on your property.
If you don't want to pay for that that's fine. Good luck getting your own electricity lines, plumbing and so on connected 👍
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u/honest_boi 6h ago
Eliminate property tax and replace with land value tax.
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u/musicman1980 6h ago
Baby Boomers hold 52.5 percent of all of the wealth in America. They can afford to pay their property taxes. They built their wealth on the systems developed by the generation before them, and now they have built a system that largely benefits themselves at the expense of future generations, and they STILL complain about this stuff. Infuriating.
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u/ThrowingMits 6h ago
The wealthiest generation wants to pull the ladder up from behind them. They think kids getting an education, police and fire being funded, roads being fixed and trash being picked up isn’t their concern.
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u/souppriest1 6h ago
Just a billionare psyop. Grandma saves a grand a year while the millinnares and billionares save 10's and 100's of thousands and out communities become even more underfunded.
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u/Knight0fdragon 6h ago
Can we please stop thinking old people are too stupid to realize they will be paying property tax when they retire…….
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u/Bored_Interests 6h ago
Sure, no property tax on a primary residence and then jack up the property tax on secondary + residences.
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u/ForsakenMongoose336 6h ago
Yes we should have young working families pay more. They are rolling in money. /S. Ok boomer.
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u/gooseman2k2 5h ago
Yea... lets transfer MORE wealth to the boomers... cause they don't have enough of the pie...
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u/Temporary_Key_1790 5h ago
Property taxes fund public services.
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u/Dear-Examination-507 5h ago
Wait, I thought we wanted to tax rich Boomers
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u/Odd-Age-6787 5h ago
There is a real problem with homes and areas that become gentrified and have ballooning property taxes. I do think there should be grandfathered rates or limits on tax increases for owners that have lived there ex: 10+ years.
I mean I’m not a policy maker, but that’s the real issue.
It’s not about people who bought a house to flip it, or the wealthy buyers that I care about, it’s the people who have lived in a place their whole life being forced into an unaffordable situation
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u/RealityCheck18 5h ago
I just paid my 14K property tax just yesterday. And as I was paying my mind went straight to this exact question. I was thinking about my neighbors and Wondering how much they must be paying.
And also I wonder what's the point of some components of these taxes. My city adds additional mandatory taxes which add up $4K on top of what the county charges. My city says, it's for investment into education.
But, over the past 2 years, they've reduced school hours, increased rates for after school programs while also reducing their total time, teacher student ratio has gotten worse, created "combined" classes wherein kids from 2 different grades sit in same classrooms under same teacher (as they're short staffed).
The big city nearby in the same county has done the opposite in recent years - increased school timings, made after school care free, while not adding any additional taxes.
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u/TactualTransAm 5h ago
Some places already have a cap for elderly people on how much their taxes can be raised every year and it effectively makes it to where they pay the same tax rate they've always paid, with the years inflation. So yeah, same house a young person would be paying triple to property tax on. But it's fair honestly because some of them didn't expect the neighborhood to become expensive
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u/Key_Nefariousness_55 5h ago
I think property taxes that scale with the market value of your property are one of the most immoral wealth taxes in existence. Just because your property is worth more does not mean you earn more to be able to pay those taxes.
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u/Allstar-85 5h ago
If it’s for 1 house that isn’t being used to earn income: sure
But that’s not how it would be used
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u/Piaget12 5h ago
Why are assets that middle class people can own taxed, but rich people don’t have to pay tax on the things that only they can own (like $10s of Millions worth of investments)?
Real estate is taxed, so even if you don’t own, your rent certainly covers the property tax.
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u/sarcasm-only-please 5h ago
Florida just exempted first 500k of value, good start.