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New Hampshire also has very high property taxes. You can't balance a budget on liquor store proceeds. (Alaska has the oil thing). 5.3% income tax (MA) vs 5-6

by jbooth 16y ago

New Hampshire also has very high property taxes. You can't balance a budget on liquor store proceeds. (Alaska has the oil thing). 5.3% income tax (MA) vs 5-6k higher property tax bill means, unless you're making over 100k (much less common in NH than SF or NYC), then NH is a higher-tax place to live. This is in contradiction to what 80% of people who live in the area will tell you, but they're all wrong, these are the numbers.

btilly 16y ago
When I lived in NH most of the property tax bill went to the local government for things like schools, and not the state. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire#Economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire#Economy Overall, New Hampshire remains ranked 49th among states in combined average state and local tax burden. This suggests that the locals actually are correct.
- jbooth 16y ago
  When you lived in NH, the state was redistributing some of that property tax to poorer municipalities due to a NH state supreme court case that happened around 10-20 years ago. And, like I said, if you weren't making a lot of money you were probably getting a bum rap compared to income tax as far as how much you had to pay relative to the total tax take. Property taxes are regressive unless you have a sweetheart landlord. I was talking about southern NH where the property values are high and everything else is comparable to Massachusetts - between northern MA and southern NH you're talking a 5-6k real estate tax bump for the average home. In the boonies you pay less property tax because your town is getting it from Nashua. They do have a lightweight state gov't, but it still costs money to run the various services in every town. If you want to live somewhere very isolated and not pay for services you're not getting, though, northern NH is your place. EDIT: Ugh! Clicked through to wikipedia. What's the cite? "The Tax Foundation". It doesn't even mention property taxes, just state taxes, and no indication as to how they produced the number. Their PDF is 1 page. Think tanks are fun! http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/468.html http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/468.html
  - btilly 16y ago
    Which court case? Based on a quick search I suspect you're talking about http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/opinions/1997/school.htm http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/opinions/1997/school.h... which demanded changes that happened a couple of years later as seen in http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/opinions/1999/clarprac.htm http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/opinions/1999/clarprac... with some back and forth. From which I conclude that when I lived there the state was NOT redistributing that money since I lived in NH from 1992 through 1998. As for where I lived, in Hanover the property values are not very high. (Locally they are somewhat higher because of Dartmouth College, but are still not that high.)
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Yeah, rhetorical device -- although 97 sounds way more recent than 13 years ago, damn. And yeah, Hanover's pretty far out there, on the border with VT. Everything that's not within a couple miles of Dartmouth is officially the woods :) Having I-89 there makes it reasonable, I guess. The bills have to be paid somehow, though, and in NH they're paid via property tax.

by jbooth 16y ago

btilly 16y ago

When I lived in NH most of the property tax bill went to the local government for things like schools, and not the state. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire#Economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hampshire#Economy Overall, New Hampshire remains ranked 49th among states in combined average state and local tax burden. This suggests that the locals actually are correct.

jbooth 16y ago
When you lived in NH, the state was redistributing some of that property tax to poorer municipalities due to a NH state supreme court case that happened around 10-20 years ago. And, like I said, if you weren't making a lot of money you were probably getting a bum rap compared to income tax as far as how much you had to pay relative to the total tax take. Property taxes are regressive unless you have a sweetheart landlord. I was talking about southern NH where the property values are high and everything else is comparable to Massachusetts - between northern MA and southern NH you're talking a 5-6k real estate tax bump for the average home. In the boonies you pay less property tax because your town is getting it from Nashua. They do have a lightweight state gov't, but it still costs money to run the various services in every town. If you want to live somewhere very isolated and not pay for services you're not getting, though, northern NH is your place. EDIT: Ugh! Clicked through to wikipedia. What's the cite? "The Tax Foundation". It doesn't even mention property taxes, just state taxes, and no indication as to how they produced the number. Their PDF is 1 page. Think tanks are fun! http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/468.html http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/468.html
- btilly 16y ago
  Which court case? Based on a quick search I suspect you're talking about http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/opinions/1997/school.htm http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/opinions/1997/school.h... which demanded changes that happened a couple of years later as seen in http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/opinions/1999/clarprac.htm http://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/opinions/1999/clarprac... with some back and forth. From which I conclude that when I lived there the state was NOT redistributing that money since I lived in NH from 1992 through 1998. As for where I lived, in Hanover the property values are not very high. (Locally they are somewhat higher because of Dartmouth College, but are still not that high.)
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Yeah, rhetorical device -- although 97 sounds way more recent than 13 years ago, damn. And yeah, Hanover's pretty far out there, on the border with VT. Everything that's not within a couple miles of Dartmouth is officially the woods :) Having I-89 there makes it reasonable, I guess. The bills have to be paid somehow, though, and in NH they're paid via property tax.