speaking of taxes (property)

 

Here in PA, we get 3 bills. One sewage/township, one county, and school. The three added together is our total liability.

The first 2 are due 3/31 and 4/1, and the big one, the school, 8/31.

Personally, I hate taking large amounts out of savings, but it's life.

When I was younger I got two bits of advice that really I'm glad I got. Because even with the internet, we can only know so much.

One coworker who was much older told me, every extra penny you have, if you have extra, put it to your mortgage. You know what my response was?

"How will they know to apply it to the principal, and how will it be kept track of?"

Naive, huh? Kinda like when I first started working, I didn't do 401k nor stock purchase plan for 3 years (well that co. is a dud so I wish I had never done stock purchase plan).

Then, my uncle told me, never roll property taxes into a mortgage, you pay it on your own. Now I'm not positive but I think there can be cases where the bank charges you 1/8 a point to handle your own taxes because it's a risk. But in my case I don't have a mortgage I have only a home equity with knock on wood 35 mos. left. So there has never been an option to roll taxes into the monthly.....

Isn't the PA way unusual? 3 bills all due separately? I always worry what if they don't come in the mail lol

Here's Lake County, Ohio, plan

In Lake County, Ohio, where I live, I get three bills. The first is a water bill directly from the water company, typically ~$30 per month. The second is a sewer bill from the county for ~$80 every three months. And the third bill is the property tax bill which is due twice a year, ~$1200 each. Instead of having to come up with $1200 twice a year, Lake County lets you pay monthly, in my case, ~$240 a month for ten months. There are no payments due in August and September. To use the monthly payment plan, you must agree to let the county take the payment directly from your checking account. So in sum, all three bills, the sewer, the water, and the property taxes are all automatically debited from my account which to me means it's about as humane as paying bills can be.

Phil

--
"No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won't make it worse."

Wow, that's cheap

On Long Island (Suffolk County which isn't the worst) I get the privilege of making two payments a year, each cumulative of the school taxes, sewer, and all those lovely special interest things which I have no idea of who is interested in them... My 4/31 and 7/31 payments each are about $4700. Home insurance is on top of that. My water bill here is negligible, but I'm in a great area for that. Some pay stupid money for water. Mine is about $10 every other month.

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Striving to make the NYC Metro area project the best.

Why those dates?

camerabob wrote:

... My 4/31 and 7/31 payments each are about $4700. ...

I wonder what the logic is of spacing out twice-a-year tax payments only three months apart. Why not six months apart? And why does your April have 31 days?

Phil

--
"No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won't make it worse."

St. Louis County, MO property taxes

One killer bill every year. 2 years ago it increased 20% and last year it increased 30%.

We own two commercial buildings and now STL CO takes 20% of the gross income before we buy insurance, make repairs, etc.

We get no "services" like sewer, trash pickup, etc. We do get the normal services like police, fire department, etc, but 20% of gross? Robbery!!!!!

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rvOutrider

Egad

rvOutrider wrote:

One killer bill every year. 2 years ago it increased 20% and last year it increased 30%...

Egad, over the last two years that's a 56% tax increase. Were these tax increases approved by the voters or were they forced on the property owners? And what are the alleged benefits of the increase?

Phil

--
"No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won't make it worse."

Warren County, Ohio

I live in a municipality and our water, trash collection, and sewage is $85.00 a month. Property taxes hit twice a year; in February and July. You can do two separate payments or you can pay the lump sum in February when the first tax bill is mailed out. My taxes this year comes out to a grand total of $902.00. This is after the homestead deduction and a bunch of other deductions that you get if you are an old guy. The amount before deductions is somewhere north of $2000.00.

--
With God, all things are possible. ——State motto of the Great State of Ohio

prepaying mortgage

I had a mortgage that I was prepaying that went to interest unless I specifically told them to put it to principle. Over the years I have had about 8 or 10 mortgages and maybe 8 or so redo's to lower the interest rate. Without exception, every single time I went in to sign the new mortgage there was a mistake in the paperwork. Always in the favor of the mortgage company, ALWAYS.

I once finished signing a new mortgage and went home. About 2 hours later the lady from the mortgage company called me and said they made a mistake and that I owed another $1800 for some expenses they forgot to add. I just started laughing and hung up the phone. I am guessing they try this every time they do a new mortgage and maybe get a sucker to pay the extra money.

In my opinion all mortgage company's are low life scum. Just my personal opinion from experience.

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Dudlee

I

am willing to say when I bought my house in 2002, I only put 10% down. This means I got an 80% loan, normal mortgage, and a 10% home equity, at 1% higher. This 10% went towards downpay and closing, to avoid PMI. The idea would be I take the combined amount, and try to add some more to the 10% loan, which was 15 years, and get rid of it ASAP.

I got the above from a bank. I had to lock in the rates so I faxed the banker on a day they dipped 1/4%. The next day the banker called and said he will lock the rates today, when they went up again. I said but I faxed yesterday, to which he replied, "I was out of the office yesterday. Am I entitled to a vacation day? Can you buy a stock today, at yesterday's price?" I actually was sickened when I calculated how much 1/8% over 30 years would cost, and was making plans to cancel the mortgage with him. The guy calls back and apologizes and says he was unprofessional. This is a bank.

Now, a mortgage co. who wanted me to borrow 90% and pay PMI? When I said I was going with a bank to avoid PMI and doing 80/10, he says, "You will never be able to pay off the 10%, believe me!" wth?

Anyway, as mentioned, that older coworker told me to put every extra penny towards the mortgage. What sound advice. Every once in a while someone gives you free but good advice.

The other thing about the large school taxes, I had a kid in school for the first time 2019-2020, so going forward, I'm ok with them. But there were 16 years of paying without any kids!! hehe that sorta reveals one's age too! It does seem parents generally have gotten older, meaning I'm a lot older than my parents were, when I was 6 y.o.

tax

when i bought this house in 1973 i paid $ 26,500 for it and paid $ 75 in property tax ! now the tax is $ 3400 a year, 2 years ago they increased the value by $30,000 and this year $ 18,000 the tax is so much a year based on an amount per $1000 they say my house is now worth over $ 300,000 and taxed accordingly! the taxes are insane i pay a port tax the nearest water port is over 30 miles away

I get 14 Tax Bills :-)

My water, sewage, and trash collection are all billed by the city each month as a single bill. So 12 bills a year for that.

The property tax bills are twice a year, paid to the county six months apart.

In California, written into the State Constitution, the property tax increases are limited to a maximum rate of increase of two percent per year, starting with the purchase price. This can lead to a big difference in the tax dollars per year paid on property with the same market value.

We own two houses with essentially the same market value. We live in one that we bought in 1969 for $32,250 that is now worth about $900,000 due to the crazy increase in real estate prices. The other we bought a few years ago for our son and his family to get them into a house that early-career people cannot touch on their own.

Both houses are valued about the same. Property taxes on the house in which our son and his family live are about seven (7) times the taxes on the house in which we live.

- Tom -

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XXL540, GO LIVE 1535, GO 620

Also In PA

I live in a small rural county, also in PA. We get two bills each year, the county, due in April and school due in August. We have a well and septic system so there are no water or sewer bills.

It's impossible to predict what the county tax bill will be since they are self insured for employee health care. This year it went up 30% because a county worker needed a heart transplant. I find it interesting that the bill never goes down in years when everyone stays healthy.

from

2002 to 2020, the taxes have doubled. They're not as high as NJ, but they're not that low either.

When a large tree fell from our yard and over half the street, at 2 AM in a storm our town came out and suddenly chain saws and picker trucks etc. Apparently our road is a state highway?? And the worker told me to contact PennDot to see if they would remove the rest (the road and sidewalk were cleared by the township). Day after I called, PennDot surveyed the road and said the tree is inside the right of way and not their responsibility. It's true, I thought so. But they came out 1 business day after I called. I asked why would the township start to clear the road if it's your road? PennDot said you got me, that's odd. Also, the town plows the road.

Well, whatever the case, I felt in that incident which was 1 year ago now, my tax dollars were effective!!

Then I got 4 more quotes to remove the tree, all $2900. Last minute quote? $1200. HUH? You bet I went with $1200!!

.

johnnatash4 wrote:

~snip~

I asked why would the township start to clear the road if it's your road? PennDot said you got me, that's odd. Also, the town plows the road.

~snip

Penndot pays towns that want to do snow removal, to plow state roads within their borders. From what I hear it's a good chunk of change too.

As for the township clearing a part of the road, mostly likely they did it for emergency vehicles to be able to get through if needed since PennDot's response time can be pretty slow.

.

--
. 2 Garmin DriveSmart 61 LMT-S, Nuvi 2689, 2 Nuvi 2460, Zumo 550, Zumo 450, Uniden R3 radar detector with GPS built in, includes RLC info. Uconnect 430N Garmin based, built into my Jeep. .

Don't put taxes into mortgage

Many, many years ago, the bank had insisted, that they pay the taxes and it would be part of our monthly payments. We had just purchased the home and had almost no equity.

The municipality's tax installments were due four times a year. The bank paid the taxes three times a year. We got a notice from the bank that we were in arrears on the tax payment simply due to the different payment schedules. The bank had more of my money than they needed up to that point and were making money on the extra. They would have been losing a small amount, for about one month, that was less than they had made at my expense. The extra payment that they demanded, would mean that they permanently would have more money, than they needed, and they could make money at my expense.

Set aside money in your savings account, make a small amount of interest, and keep the bank from shafting you. Schedule your online banking to pay automatically, so you don't forget.

--
DriveSmart 65, NUVI2555LMT, (NUVI350 is Now Retired)

In TX we get 1 properly tax

In TX we get 1 properly tax bill which is high as this is how the state funds itself since there is no income tax. There is water assessed yearly as well as part of the property tax but does not include use so you get a monthly water/sewage/trash bill. As deficits add up you can expect higher and higher taxes. In TX, recent increases are about 10%/year, in addition to high fees for other things like car registration etc. Still one of the better states to work, not so sure about retirement as property taxes are frozen but not significantly reduced.

car

I have to say it looks like year over year our taxes go up 3-4%. Have not seen 10% and by law even with our assessments doubling, I read they cannot go up more than 10% as a result (maybe this is on average I guess I let the details go since I do feel powerless to fight it). It would seem that assessments are meant to adjust for realistic numbers? And also to nail people who added things without proper permits?

On the car, I'm glad the only thing unreasonable for us is an annual safety and emissions. This can run as high as $98!!! We clip coupons, and the lowest I have ever seen is $29.99. After fees and taxes that's $38. We have a tax on auto repair called "shop fees." Completely bogus and a flat addtional 3%.

The oddity with cars is when people register in a state they do not live. I've never understood how that's not insurance fraud. Like in states such as VA/CT/MA/NH where they basically have a property tax based on the value of the vehicle, people turn to states like MT to get tags. Here in PA I think it went up to maybe $43 per year for plates, and like I said with a coupon maybe $45/yr to inspect. So fancy car, heap, it's the same. My bro says CT has an additional tax for cars valued over $50k. that's crazy as the avg car today is already 38k, average (which is why I avoid buying anything new).

I don't feel our income tax is that high at a flat 3.07%. But it was weird how within that last 10-15 years, each local town got to skim 1% in addition. So most working in PA pay 1% to the town in which they work.

Another tidbit--imho only Philadelphia that I know of. When my wife worked for a large bank based in MN, the HR had special paperwork for working in Phila. One needed to state, what school district does one work in? Phila. What school district does one reside in? Imagine every co. needs to track this for employees working in Phila. And we wonder why many cos. left for the suburbs?

Not looking forward to my savings account hit later this month for the school taxes. Kind of depressing.

Reply to Plunder re property taxes

They were forced on us! NO VOTE.

St. Louis County reassesses every two years. You can appeal, but it seldom does any good. The ballot box is the only way to protest. ST Co gives away soooo.. much TiFF money to big retail developments that they have to take it from the people who don't have big attorneys.

They are now raking off over 20% of our "gross" income off the property. Personally, I would drive out of STL and never look back, but selling the property would kill us on capital gains because we have had the property 40 years.

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rvOutrider

Drive out of STL

rvOutrider wrote:

They were forced on us! NO VOTE.

St. Louis County reassesses every two years. You can appeal, but it seldom does any good. The ballot box is the only way to protest. ST Co gives away soooo.. much TiFF money to big retail developments that they have to take it from the people who don't have big attorneys.

They are now raking off over 20% of our "gross" income off the property. Personally, I would drive out of STL and never look back, but selling the property would kill us on capital gains because we have had the property 40 years.

Check out IRS Section 121, if you plan to sell the property. Property is your primary residence and you live on it for 2 years in the last 5 years. Up to $500k for married and $250k for single may be excluded in capital gains. Check your local state tax laws.

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nuvi 2460LMT

ad valorem tax

I haven’t lived in VA since the ‘90s but this discussion reminded me of a tax construct which always left me amused. In VA the ad valorem auto tax was indeed high and it drove people nuts. They complained that MD, next door, didn’t have one (or it was quite low, can’t remember). UNFAIR!!!

There was just no way to explain to them that overall VA taxes were much lower than MD taxes and if they wanted low taxes they succeeded. They didn’t get it that taxes are an arbitrary construct. Less income taxes will beget more property taxes etc. They just fixated on and hated the ad valorem tax.

the other thing

minke wrote:

I haven’t lived in VA since the ‘90s but this discussion reminded me of a tax construct which always left me amused. In VA the ad valorem auto tax was indeed high and it drove people nuts. They complained that MD, next door, didn’t have one (or it was quite low, can’t remember). UNFAIR!!!

There was just no way to explain to them that overall VA taxes were much lower than MD taxes and if they wanted low taxes they succeeded. They didn’t get it that taxes are an arbitrary construct. Less income taxes will beget more property taxes etc. They just fixated on and hated the ad valorem tax.

my mom always said that home values have a lot to do with the school system. So even for those without kids, sometimes it's good to be in a place that has decent schools. Interestingly in PA, sometimes better schools have lower taxes, and higher property values....I was told that's due to the tax base i.e. businesses who are paying taxes.

Generally we like lower, but not always.

good school systems

johnnatash4 wrote:
minke wrote:

I haven’t lived in VA since the ‘90s but this discussion reminded me of a tax construct which always left me amused. In VA the ad valorem auto tax was indeed high and it drove people nuts. They complained that MD, next door, didn’t have one (or it was quite low, can’t remember). UNFAIR!!!

There was just no way to explain to them that overall VA taxes were much lower than MD taxes and if they wanted low taxes they succeeded. They didn’t get it that taxes are an arbitrary construct. Less income taxes will beget more property taxes etc. They just fixated on and hated the ad valorem tax.

my mom always said that home values have a lot to do with the school system. So even for those without kids, sometimes it's good to be in a place that has decent schools. Interestingly in PA, sometimes better schools have lower taxes, and higher property values....I was told that's due to the tax base i.e. businesses who are paying taxes.

Generally we like lower, but not always.

When we moved to CO in the '90s I asked a buddy from my youth who was a Deputy Superintendent of Schools in MA how to judge a school system. His reply was that good schools come from parents who demand performance. That correlated with well educated parents. That sounded good but didn't work that well. I'm told that CO has a very high college graduate percentage. (Perhaps that is old data as the rest of what I will say.) Last I checked (turn of the century?) we were 48th in per student spending for both K-12 and University systems. We don't care here.

Off topic:
Remote learning is obviously a hot topic today. I'd like to address
my experience as an adult. For fun (some will laugh!) I took a few physics classes a the U. of MD in the late '70s. I had the same Prof for all of them and he was very smart and somewhat lazy. He thought (I think correctly) that no one could teach physics better than Richard Feynman and a bunch of our classes were spent watching Feynman teach on 16 mm film when at Cornell in the '60s and at CIT in the '70s on some kind of tape. I don't learn well from youtube and always prefer to read. Never the less Feynman's videos demonstrated that video learning can be wonderful.

interesting stuff

minke wrote:
johnnatash4 wrote:
minke wrote:

I haven’t lived in VA since the ‘90s but this discussion reminded me of a tax construct which always left me amused. In VA the ad valorem auto tax was indeed high and it drove people nuts. They complained that MD, next door, didn’t have one (or it was quite low, can’t remember). UNFAIR!!!

There was just no way to explain to them that overall VA taxes were much lower than MD taxes and if they wanted low taxes they succeeded. They didn’t get it that taxes are an arbitrary construct. Less income taxes will beget more property taxes etc. They just fixated on and hated the ad valorem tax.

my mom always said that home values have a lot to do with the school system. So even for those without kids, sometimes it's good to be in a place that has decent schools. Interestingly in PA, sometimes better schools have lower taxes, and higher property values....I was told that's due to the tax base i.e. businesses who are paying taxes.

Generally we like lower, but not always.

When we moved to CO in the '90s I asked a buddy from my youth who was a Deputy Superintendent of Schools in MA how to judge a school system. His reply was that good schools come from parents who demand performance. That correlated with well educated parents. That sounded good but didn't work that well. I'm told that CO has a very high college graduate percentage. (Perhaps that is old data as the rest of what I will say.) Last I checked (turn of the century?) we were 48th in per student spending for both K-12 and University systems. We don't care here.

Off topic:
Remote learning is obviously a hot topic today. I'd like to address
my experience as an adult. For fun (some will laugh!) I took a few physics classes a the U. of MD in the late '70s. I had the same Prof for all of them and he was very smart and somewhat lazy. He thought (I think correctly) that no one could teach physics better than Richard Feynman and a bunch of our classes were spent watching Feynman teach on 16 mm film when at Cornell in the '60s and at CIT in the '70s on some kind of tape. I don't learn well from youtube and always prefer to read. Never the less Feynman's videos demonstrated that video learning can be wonderful.

Just asked my wife to remind me to pay the taxes in person before 8/31....darn it's coming up...not good!

Off topic:

So many ideas I know. I do agree there is mega value in human interaction. And learning professionally is often by doing not by remote learning. But I will say YouTube can be very valuable too.

I'm the parent of a 6 y.o. who just finished kindergarten. I was overly simplistic. High SATs means good school. RIGHT!

I noticed that across the board in Massachusetts there's a tendency for very high SAT median results. Same was true in the school where my wife's uncle teaches, Winnetka IL. So I told him I notice the SAT median scores at your HS are really up there, like MA. They do a good job with prep I take it.

Well, he pointed out, not really, actually, if you look at the median income here, it's well over 200k per household. Many parents here have the means to spend hundreds of dollars per hour for private tutors. Wow, I did not know that (well how would I right?).

Then, once when dropping my wife's car off for service, the shuttle drive was an ex-principal. He said you have a pretty decent school district. i said well not as good as....here's where he said education is a combination of the student, the parents, and the educators, together. You have that in your district. The district that you mention, my friend is a principle at H****** High School (it's not the one that Kobe Bryant went to, it's the other one in the town where the really wealthy go). He pointed out they have their own set of issues to contend with, like kids going out to their porsches at break and smoking weed. He said I didn't have a problem like that in my district, my kids had no cars. If they had more than 1 parent that would be 50/50. So that opened my eyes.

I paid attention in physics so if you tell me all these GM cars have basically the same engine and the HP ranges from 270 to 330, I understand why. the torque on all of the above is barely going to be above 270 ft. lbs. Marketing can get the HP to 330 HP, but it can't do a darn thing about the torque! And this goes for any engine that has a higher HP number than its torque. Many of the things we learn at an early age, imho, are in fact valuable.

Learning Spanish

Our school district in CO is said to be one of the better ones. My kids, separated by 3 years, had vastly different experiences. My second son came out competent (not fluent) in Spanish. My first son's experience was that each Spanish teacher was fired at the end of the year.

in my day

minke wrote:

Our school district in CO is said to be one of the better ones. My kids, separated by 3 years, had vastly different experiences. My second son came out competent (not fluent) in Spanish. My first son's experience was that each Spanish teacher was fired at the end of the year.

Again, 2-3 weeks before I have to write the "big" check. I think it's TD that it gets dropped off at...forget. One set is TD or Wells, the other Citizens. For pay in person.

In my day, for my parents, private school wasn't even a consideration, why? I suppose to be "elite" then yes, but unnecessary if one wanted to go to the top universities in the country. The toughest ones had about 19% acceptance, under 5% today. But much cheaper today than back then as for the majority of people, it's 10% of parents' income plus a % of assets (great time to rent lol with this plus tax act of 2017). So if a kid gets into an elite college, it will cost parents less than a state university. Point I'm making is at least my public HS did its job well and it was up to the students really if they wanted to absorb the materials. Not everyone is aware but with elite colleges there are no student loans. Only grants, scholarships, and work study, plus parents' contribution, which again is roughly 10% of the total. No student leaves with a loan. This was not the case in my day.

Say you are 20 years out of HS, do you still (rhetorical) remember V = ir? That there are 128 oz in a gallon (how come bleach is 121 and 81 today?), or 64 oz in a half gallon (how come orange juice was 59 oz then 51 oz?), and on and on. Say you don't remember, is this a fault of the school's, or your own?

Granted my son only finished K in public school. With Covid 19, 4 of his teachers came to our house, masked, stayed outside, bearing gifts that they purchased with their own money. You can't say they don't care. But will my son go to an elite college as a result of their actions? Probably not today. So it goes back likely to what that shuttle driver told me, it's a partnership of school, student, and parents. If you look at that greatschools website we're up there. But that's oversimplistic of course, how can a HS be rated on a simple scale of a number between 1 to 10, a middle, elementary...and that tells much if anything. I suppose you see low numbers like 5 or 4 or 1, that's scary.