Thursday, July 09, 2009

Real Estate Tax Bill Appeals Take Rising Toll on Governments

Real Estate Tax Bill Appeals Take Rising Toll on Governments

http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/107274/tax-bill-appeals-take-rising-toll-on-governments.html?mod=taxes-filing

"Homeowners across the country are challenging their property tax bills in droves as the value of their homes drop, threatening local governments with another big drain on their budgets.

The requests are coming in record numbers, from owners of $10 million estates and one-bedroom bungalows, from residents of the high-tax enclaves surrounding New York City, and from taxpayers in the Rust Belt and states like Arizona, Florida and California, where whole towns have been devastated by the housing bust."

""It's worthy of a Dickens story," said Gus Kramer, the assessor in Contra Costa County, Calif., outside San Francisco. "These people are desperate. They know their home's gone down in value. They've watched their neighborhoods being boarded up. They literally stand in there and say: 'When can I have my refund check? I need to feed my family. I need to pay my electric bill.""

"The tax appeals and reassessments present a new budget nightmare for governments. In a survey conducted by the National Association of Counties, 76 percent of large counties said that falling property tax revenue was significantly affecting their budgets, said Jacqueline Byers, the association's research director."

"Officials in some states say their property tax revenue is falling for the first time since World War II."

COMMENT

As friends and neighbors get reduced real estate tax bills, more homeowners will want one too. When towns and counties have reduced income, they have to adjust their budgets so they do not exceed their income. This can result in layoffs of town and county personnel, possible salary and benefit reductions of remaining personnel, and possible reductions of services.

Most of us in private enterprise have already taken our firings, salary and benefit reductions, and other losses so we know what it is like. Most of us in private enterprise will never know annual pay increases, defined pension plans, free medical, dental, and hospital plans, and job security again during our lifetimes like the government workers continue to benefit from for the most part. Most of us are pretty ignorant about the total cost of each American government worker and would be shocked to know what each is. Sure, some towns have already cut salaries of their public workers to obscene levels, but they are the exception...most public employees do very well compared to those in the public sector.

Some town and county governments are also bloated with excess employees.

Our elected officials run fairy lands where most of them spend taxpayers money like it is never going to end. In almost thirty five years of home ownership, I have never seen a year with no tax increase let alone with a reduction in taxes. And there have been many opportunities for our elected officials to be fair with us and keep taxes low, but they ignored us.

Go to your board of education, your town and county meetings and ask how many loaded employee costs are above $100,000 per year. Ask them how many and the names of employees earning more than $3,000 in overtime during the past year. Ask them for the names of each department that exceeded their budgets in spending. Ask them how many town retirees currently receive more than $100,000 in benefits. Ask them how many cars their entity is providing for personal use to their employees and their names and their job responsibilities.

Investigate where your taxes are going and complain.

In highly populated states like New Jersey, we are forced to pay billions of dollars for the education and health care of illegal aliens which is unfair to rank and file taxpayers. the sucking sound is our money being taxed at the local, county and state levels. And it is not for a few thousand, or a few tens of thousands or even for a few hundred thousand of them but tens of millions of them! This money could be reallocated for American citizens and legal aliens and maybe even provide reductions in our taxation.

My county supports a huge nursing home that pays out huge amounts of overtime money. I doubt that it is paying for itself from billing their patients. I do not think it is well run. It has high paying county jobs that smell of excess (patronage) that I believe private enterprise would not have or would not pay the excessive salaries and benefits. the hospital should be sold to private enterprise.

My county has about 23 towns all with their own school systems and administrators and a huge county education system. Instead of creatively working with the town school boards, we are paying for a parallel unnecessary universe of administrators, teachers, schools, and other expenses at the county level.

More than 90% of the town education funding comes from local real estate taxes and then we are hit with county taxes which include an excessive high school system and a large nursing home. Less than 6% of the town educational budget comes from state aid with other communities unfairly receiving much larger percentages. I can understand paying my fair share of the town educational budget, but why do I have to contribute to the high school educations to students from other town from my county?

Maybe it would be good for local, county, state, and federal governments to rightsize their salary and benefit packages including retirement to better reflect those in the lower public sector. Maybe there should also be careful thought on services that should be provided and those that should be given or sold to the private sector.