Free Republic

Property taxes, known as “taxes foncières” in France, have rocketed over the last few years, a new report found. Between 2010 and 2015 property taxes in France, known as “taxes foncières”, shot up by an average of 14.70 percent. Some areas were particularly hard hit, including Clermont Ferrand in central France with a rise of 20.29 percent and Lille in the north which saw a 19 percent increase. …

Cook County taxpayers are outraged after property tax bills showed up in the mail. The bills are skyrocketing this year. The city of Chicago and its public school district's fiscal problems literally hit home over the weekend, when property owners saw their second installment tax bills. Outside the assessor's office, city homeowners told one property tax horror story after another.

Chicago homeowners should brace themselves for sticker shock when they open their mailbox at the end of the month: property tax bills on average 13 percent higher than last year. The big increase is mostly being driven by the record tax increase Mayor Rahm Emanuel engineered last fall to fix city pension funds for police officers and firefighters. Cook County Clerk David Orr released tax rate figures Monday, revealing the practical effects of City Hall's painful decision. The owner of a single-family home with the current average sale price of about $225,000 can expect to see a property tax bill...

Rep. Rick Saccone stands on the House floor to urge for support of an amendment to a property tax bill that contains the language of HB 76, the Property Tax Independence Act.

Coloradans on average paid 8.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes in fiscal year 2012, down a bit from the 9 percent rate in the previous year... The Colorado rate was well below the national local-tax burden of 9.8 percent.. Colorado ranked 35th among the states for collective state and local tax burden, with No. 1 -- New York, at 12.7 percent -- having the highest state and local tax burden and No. 50 -- Alaska, at 6.5 percent -- the lowest. ... Taxes covered by the report include state and local income tax, property tax and...

By John F. Di Leo - Reflections on the latest tax hike request from the City of Chicago... Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has asked for a massive tax increase. No surprise there. Massive tax increases have been the stock-in-trade of the Democratic Party for a century, so it barely merits comment nowadays. It’s what you expect when you elect Democrats (the sad thing is that you expect an equal level of opposition to taxes when you elect Republicans, but contrary to the laws of physics, such an equal and opposite reaction rarely appears). The oddity of this new one –...

Is Mayor Rahm Emanuel preparing to exempt some homeowners from his big new property tax? A series of fascinating signals is emanating from City Hall that suggest, to ease passage of his $500 million plan through the City Council, the mayor indeed is preparing a plan—being dubbed internally the "bungalow belt exemption"—to give a break to owners of middle-income residences. No figures are available as to exactly who would be covered. The Emanuel administration is in high message-control mode since word of the pending tax hike leaked out earlier in the week, with the mayor apparently trying to float ideas...

Even as Mayor Rahm Emanuel warns about a property tax hike of up to $250 million for the cash-strapped Chicago Public Schools, another big wave of increases likely is coming to rescue the pensions of police officers and firefighters. A massive payment due to those retirement plans next year could drive up Chicago property taxes by more than 30 percent, according to a Crain's analysis. And if the current logjam in Springfield continues, it could be a lot worse. Taxes on a $250,000 home would jump $224, assuming the city continues its current practice of using property taxes to fund...

One of every four retired workers from the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools is getting a pension of more than $60,000 a year. That’s 80,365 people in all. For 13,240 of them, those checks provide a yearly income of $100,000 or more, a Chicago Sun-Times/Better Government Association analysis of pension records has found. An additional 20,004 have pension incomes totaling between $80,000 and $100,000 a year. ... the root of the problem is that government officials kept promising lifetime benefits to workers — and, in many cases, to their surviving spouses should they...

VOTE AGAINST HIGHER TAXES MAY 12TH The millage tax increase scheduled on May 12th of 5.6 mills would make the average overall millage rate in the Pulaski County Special School District from 40.7 to 46.3 mills. Arkansas already has a 6.5% sales tax, 40.2 cents a gallon tax on gas, a capital gains tax, & a high income tax. Arkansas is one of the highest taxes states in a nation that is over $18 trillion in debt! Yet the AR Education Commissioner Tony Wood, who approved this millage tax, still made over $231,000 in 2014. This $12 million a year...

New Jersey’s openly gay state assemblyman, who was called “numbnuts” [1] in 2012 by Gov. Chris Christie (R), thinks he can do what Christie has never been able to do, numb or not: get New Jerseyans to stay in New Jersey.Assemblyman Reed Gusciora’s (D) solution is astoundingly simple. He wants to offer state home and business owners the opportunity to slash their property taxes by 25 percent.The New Jersey Legislature would then be tasked with figuring out how to make up the difference through budget cuts.The best Christie has been able to offer is a cap on future property...

Nearly a decade ago, voters approved a $25 million annual property tax increase for Denver Public Schools to fund performance and retention pay for teachers who help students learn. But now, 90 percent of eligible DPS teachers are receiving the additional compensation, according to a database obtained by Watchdog.org under state open records laws. And that’s in a district where this year 22 percent of teachers were deemed as not achieving the “effective” teaching standard, DPS data shows. Critics say the ProComp tax increase was always about collecting more tax revenue for the district than rewarding teachers who truly help...

If anything approaches “taxation without representation” in contemporary American government, it is property taxation.  This is because as a practical matter voters – as property owners – have no say in the amount of property taxation they endure.Harold Lasswell, a prominent U. of Chicago political science professor, once said that the country is made up of two groups: the political elites and the masses.  The exploitation of the masses is now being achieved through property taxation. Since political elites have, in most counties, complete control over issues of assessments and property taxes, they have the opportunity to exploit this power...

MADISON – After more than an hour of political ping pong Tuesday, with the taxpayer playing the familiar role of ball, most Senate Democrats agreed with Republicans that a $100 million property tax cut was too good a deal to pass up. Or, perhaps, political suicide to turn it down. Last week, Democrats gave Gov. Scott Walker and legislative Republicans an earful after Walker called a special session to pass a $100 million property tax cut last week. Mike Tate, chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, called the tax cut a “gimmick.” Sen. President Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, excoriated senate...

When someone comes to your door, you can let them in — or not. But keeping out a representative from the Michigan Tax Commission could be costly. At least that's what some residents in Davison Township are finding. When the local tax assessor showed up at homeowner John McLaughlin's house in the Genesee County community he said he wasn't going to let them in. So what happened after he declined the appointment: "My taxes went up," he said. The executive director of the Michigan Tax Commission said local tax assessors are supposed to be getting inside all homes to see...

The net household property tax burden in New Jersey rose 13 percent during Gov. Chris Christie’s first three years in office—a number that reflects both his success in reining in local government spending and his inability to restore a relief program that was gutted by his predecessor during the Great Recession, an Associated Press analysis of tax data has found. The growth is only slightly lower than it was in the last three years of Democrat Jon Corzine’s time as governor, when the net tax bill went up 15 percent. But it reflects a different approach: Christie, a Republican, has...

After a tradition of some 40 years of subsidizing local taxes, Gov. John Kasich and Republicans in the Ohio House and Senate applied the brakes. Local governments and schools heading for the ballot in November to ask voters to support new or replacement levies will have to tell them that the price tags attached will be higher than they were previously told. The taxpayer will pay the entire tab for any new taxes approved.snipUnder the rollback program, the state pays the first 10 percent of the tax bill for all property owners plus 2.5 percent for owner-occupied homes. The state...

Ok people here's the problem: Property taxes I am sure you agree are un-American! Why should we ~rent~ our own property from the various government entities rather than owning it outright, for all of time for our personal use/posterity!? So here's the question: what do we need to do to END PROPERTY TAXES? (I know we are a smart bunch, much smarter than the left-so we CAN get this done, somehow..).

If you live in New York City, you probably know that your income taxes are high. A combined city and state tax rate of 10.4% kicks in at just $22,000 of taxable income for a single person. You probably don't know that New York City has some of the country's highest taxes on apartment buildings—and if you're not subject to rent control, much of that cost is flowing through to you as a renter. Not all property taxes are high here: New York actually has very low taxes on owner-occupied homes. Our property tax system is a perverse cross-subsidy from...

The hollowing out of Detroit is nearly complete. All that's left is a bankrupt shell of a city with no services and scattered citizens that do not pay taxes. The Detroit News reports Half of Detroit Property Owners Don't Pay Taxes Nearly half of the owners of Detroit's 305,000 properties failed to pay their tax bills last year, exacerbating a punishing cycle of declining revenues and diminished services for a city in a financial crisis, according to a Detroit News analysis of government records. The News reviewed more than 200,000 pages of tax documents and found that 47 percent of...