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For someone who lives in a different country without this type of tax - is the amount paid directly proportional to the assessed value? (Ie tax is 0.1% of value

For someone who lives in a different country without this type of tax - is the amount paid directly proportional to the assessed value? (Ie tax is 0.1% of value, or whatever) Or is the value just used to decide the relative amounts of tax each house pays? (ie there's $100m in property tax raised, split over all the properties proportionally to their value).

criddell 4y ago
> is the amount paid directly proportional to the assessed value? Yes. In many places most of that money goes to schools and is one of the reasons why public schools in wealthy suburbs are better than schools in less affluent areas.
meepmorp 4y ago
It's a percentage of the assessed value of the property. Some places have different rates for commercial vs residential property, etc. In addition, there may be overlapping jurisdictions that separately impose real estate taxes - the local city/town, the county, possibly the state.
- WkndTriathlete 4y ago
  Well, it's a little more complicated than that. The municipality (the county, in the region of the country I'm in) sets the budget for the year, then each property's owner pays taxes in the amount of the fraction of the property's assessed value divided by the total assessed value of all property in the county times the annual budget. E.g. if the county's annual budget is $1,000, and there are three properties in the county assessed at $200,000, $300,000, and $500,000, then the property taxes for each property are $200, $300, and $500, respectively. Our county happens to have pretty conscientious governance: all properties in the county are re-assessed every two years and budget increases are in-line with inflation, so property taxes have increased very gradually since we moved in ~17 years ago. If the county doesn't have the workforce to assess all properties in the county as frequently and there are large increases in assessed values then property taxes can (temporarily) be significantly increased, which might be what is happening around Austin.

criddell 4y ago

> is the amount paid directly proportional to the assessed value? Yes. In many places most of that money goes to schools and is one of the reasons why public schools in wealthy suburbs are better than schools in less affluent areas.

meepmorp 4y ago

It's a percentage of the assessed value of the property. Some places have different rates for commercial vs residential property, etc. In addition, there may be overlapping jurisdictions that separately impose real estate taxes - the local city/town, the county, possibly the state.

WkndTriathlete 4y ago
Well, it's a little more complicated than that. The municipality (the county, in the region of the country I'm in) sets the budget for the year, then each property's owner pays taxes in the amount of the fraction of the property's assessed value divided by the total assessed value of all property in the county times the annual budget. E.g. if the county's annual budget is $1,000, and there are three properties in the county assessed at $200,000, $300,000, and $500,000, then the property taxes for each property are $200, $300, and $500, respectively. Our county happens to have pretty conscientious governance: all properties in the county are re-assessed every two years and budget increases are in-line with inflation, so property taxes have increased very gradually since we moved in ~17 years ago. If the county doesn't have the workforce to assess all properties in the county as frequently and there are large increases in assessed values then property taxes can (temporarily) be significantly increased, which might be what is happening around Austin.