“Property tax info is on website” plus 1 more |
| Property tax info is on website Posted: 20 Sep 2010 08:42 AM PDT The Sandoval County Treasurer's office added a feature to its website allowing the public to conduct property tax research. Homeowners, real estate companies and lenders can access assessed property values for previous years, record of payments, legal/situs address, current and delinquent tax charges, interest and abatement, miscellaneous charges and special assessments. The address is etweb.sandovalcountynm.gov/treasurer/web/. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Consider property tax caps carefully Posted: 20 Sep 2010 08:09 AM PDT There are few who doubted three years ago that Indiana's property taxes had become unruly and unmanageable for homeowners, many of whom were on the brink of losing their houses due to oppressive tax bills. Indiana's legislature devised a 1, 2 and 3 percent cap for property taxes, removed school districts' general funds from the property tax rolls and instituted a 1 percentage point increase in the state's sales taxes to fund schools' general funds. Homeowners now pay no more than 1 percent of their home's assessed value in property taxes. Farmers and rental properties are capped at no more than 2 percent of the assessed value, and businesses pay no more than 3 percent of assessed value. Now voters will be asked in November if they approve of enshrining the property tax caps in the state Constitution. A word of caution, though. Consider this vote and these issues carefully. Townships, towns, cities, counties, libraries and school capital project funds still are dependent on property taxes. And while the tax caps translated into lower property taxes, the cost for government services funded by property taxes will only increase. Ideally, capping property taxes will force local governments to become more efficient and do more with less. But even this has its limits. At some point, local governments will reach a tipping point where there are no more cuts to make and no more property tax money to fund services. When this happens -- and it's in the foreseeable future -- county income taxes will increase, more fees will be assessed for services and some services currently provided by local governments will be dropped. It is a fiscal certainty and one that the legislature planned on by allowing counties to increase their local income taxes. The good point is that local income taxes are difficult to increase and county and city officeholders face considerable blowback for raising taxes. But this also makes it easier to justify increases in fees instead of property tax hikes. If, for example, West Lafayette officials chose to increase property taxes to cover its fire hydrant rental fees, it would have moved many properties closer to the caps, as well as created anger among property owners. The solution: Propose a $2.37 a month increase in water fees. Additionally, putting property tax caps into the Constitution puts them beyond the reach of overreaching and overspending legislators and council members. That's the benefit. But enshrining the caps in the Constitution also means that state and local lawmakers are hindered if a financial crisis develops -- such as the recession that hit in December 2007. No one can predict what type of economic calamity the future might hold in five, 20 or 70 years. But making property taxes beyond modification might not look so good when economic disaster strikes. Meanwhile, undoing property tax caps -- amending the Constitution to increase taxes -- would likely be as popular -- and nearly as impossible -- as it would be today. We question the wisdom of putting the caps into the Constitution. But if Hoosiers vote to OK this referendum, they should do so with their eyes open -- knowing they are not voting for lower or fewer taxes. In fact, tax caps will create just the opposite. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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