Free Republic

San Francisco's mayor is asking municipal departments to find significant savings as the embattled city braces for a $728 million budget deficit, predicted for the next two fiscal years. With some of the lowest office occupancy rates in the country, thanks to the tech companies that make the city's lifeblood retreating to remote work, San Francisco has seen residents move to the suburbs - pushed also by rising crime. The city's income from property taxes and office rates has plummeted, causing sleepless nights in City Hall. London Breed, the mayor, on Thursday asked municipal departments to identify ways to reduce...

CHICAGO -- A Chicago family said their latest property tax bill increased 440% and now their modest apartment complex could go bankrupt. A one bedroom apartment will now cost Michael Markellos $17,494 in property taxes for one year. "This has put us in a tremendous financial bind, the building has gone negative in the bills," he said. He and his mother own the 10-unit Lincoln Park apartment complex. Last year's tax bill for all 10 units combined was $23,674, but now the same 10 units are $128,282 dollars this year; up 440%. "I was outraged. These are basically simple one...

Rep. Matthew Cartwright has a history of tax delinquency.. Rep. Matthew Cartwright (D., Pa.) was hit with tax penalties for late condo payments in 2021, just three years after facing media scrutiny for repeated tax delinquency. Cartwright last year owed $436.63 in penalties and interest, stemming from the late property tax payments on his Washington, D.C., condo he shares with his wife, according to D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The news could be a problem for the congressman, who is locked in a competitive race against Republican challenger Jim Bognet. Cartwright on...

The giant sucking sound in the home loan industry grew louder Wednesday when Sprout Mortgage told employees it’s going out of business. The company broke the news to its more than 300 staffers during a conference call Wednesday, according to HousingWire. A former employee of the Long Island-based mortgage lender told the publication that Sprout had already slashed its workforce several times.

Anne Van Donsel said she didn't quite believe it when her hometown of Burlington, Vermont, last year sent her a new property tax assessment stating that the value of her home had doubled — raising her property taxes by 20%. Her property taxes jumped to about $12,000 a year, up from $10,000, a bump she said is adding to the financial strain as inflation pushes up the cost of food and other necessities. While Van Donsel appealed the assessment, she was given only a small reduction in the value of her home, which didn't make a dent in her new...

When Deborah Foss, a 66-year-old grandmother in New Bedford, Mass., bought her home in 2015, she expected it would be where she would live the rest of her life in comfort and security. But by February of this year, she had been forced from her home and is now reduced to living in her car. What went wrong? With chronic health problems and living on a fixed income, Foss fell behind on her property taxes when she hit a rough financial patch. That’s when the city sold a $9,626 tax lien on her home to a private investment company. Under...

Danielle Reid joked that her family rolled into the local library branch with suitcases to fit all the books they intended to check out. The Fort Gratiot resident said they take advantage of the St. Clair County Library System twice a week, and on Friday morning, she, twin sons Titus and Abe, 5, and daughter Selah, 8, were among several families at the Port Huron branch for story time — and the hive of crafts and activity that followed. “I’m homeschooling them this year, so we’ve been able to take advantage of a lot of resources,” Reid said. “But we’ve...

Conley stated, “The general concept is to eliminate some, or all, of the district’s property taxes used for operations of the district, and at the same time institute a new SDIT that would replace the revenue currently generated by the property taxes.” Conley’s presentation to the school board comes after board members and Superintendent Renee Willis earlier this month objected to City Council approving tax abatement for the Belle Oaks Marketplace project at the Richmond Town Square mall property. Included in the $260-million mixed-use Belle Oaks project will be residential and retail uses. Only the northern portion of the mall...

Cemeteries pay zero property taxes, something the mainstream media will NEVER tell you. That means the funeral home businesses that own that type of property make a fortune off of funerals, but pay no property taxes. I am an old man and just learned that yesterday and I read extensively. Interesting that the media doesn't see fit to print all that is news.

Currently residential real estate is predominantly taxed based on its estimated market value. Ad valorum taxation stems from the colonial era when an acre of land far from the Atlantic Ocean was worth less than an acre of land near the Atlantic Ocean. Ad valorum taxation made sense when getting agricultural goods from the hinterlands to coastal city markets was very difficult and expensive. In 2021, ad valorum taxation creates a great incentive for local governments and others to make residential real estate very expensive. This is clearest in California, where it may cost $700,000 to add a new apartment...

Many of our fellow Americans live in areas where leftists have poisoned the school systems. TRADITIONAL TEACHER MODEL My primary model would have about twenty kids in a class and a tuition of around $3,500/year/student. Each teacher would set his/her tuition rate and maximum class size and handle student admission. Homeowner associations might host hook-up events for teachers, parents and prospective students. Tuition might be paid monthly for affordability and two months in advance (so it won't be problem for the teacher if the parents have a major car repair bill one month). Men and women who have good English...

The owners of the exotic 14,400-acre Hollister Ranch on the coast of California are suing the state for a host of alleged constitutional violations after lawmakers adopted a statute that gives the state free access to the land. Explained PLF: "The law at issue, AB 1680, calls for an update to older state plans to create a public access way on private land on the 14,400-acre Hollister Ranch, which borders the Pacific coast. This general goal represents an outgrowth of 2018 legislation vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown, who recommended a sensible and fiscally responsible Ranch access update. Hollister Ranch did...

Is it better to live in a state with no income tax? It’s a great question considering we already have to set aside a portion of our paychecks for the federal government. The case for removing an individual income tax typically goes like this: states that don’t dip directly into their residents’ pay become beacons for growth. They’re better at creating jobs and keeping a core of young, educated workers from moving to other states. The American Legislative Exchange Council reports that over the past decade the nine states without a personal income tax have consistently outperformed – on GDP...

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a journalist for left-leaning media outlet ProPublica. You come across data showing that in the wake of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s (TCJA) caps on deductions that artificially inflated home values, home prices across the country have fallen, particularly in high-income, upper-class areas. How do you respond?If you guessed “spin this news into a narrative about how the TCJA hurt middle-class homeowners,” you’re a winner! That’s exactly what ProPublica editor Allan Sloan did.Sloan used data showing that home values nationally are 4% lower than they otherwise would have been, extrapolating this into a...

Rahm Emanuel raised taxes to get city worker pension funds on a ‘path to solvency.’ The shortfall still ballooned by $7 billion. ... A record-high property tax increase. A new tax on water and sewer service. A higher 911 emergency fee on telephone lines... Emanuel’s series of tax hikes was painful, but he promised the extra money was part of a plan to get the woefully underfunded city worker pension funds on a “path to solvency.”.. in the four years since .. The pension funds are actually worse off. When Emanuel pushed through the tax hikes, the city worker retirement...

When the tax cuts were passed in 2017, one major sticking point was the limit on how much of your state and local taxes (SALT) could be listed as a deduction on your federal return. The amount was capped at $10,000 and this brought howls of protest from Democrats, particularly those from higher-income states like New York and California. They quickly got to work seeking to thwart the rules by allowing taxpayers to “donate” the extra amount to a “charity” set up specifically for the purpose of evading the law. That’s about to come to a halt, as a...

Tightening the leash on property taxes in Texas is now a reality. Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill into law Wednesday capping how much cities and counties can raise property taxes, and generally requires an automatic tax ratification election for cities, counties and some special districts... With the new law, the most cities can charge without an election now will be 3.5%, as opposed to the old limit of 8%.

Four Nassau homeowners filed a lawsuit Tuesday against County Executive Laura Curran, contending the county’s reassessment is arbitrary, secretive and violates state and federal constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process. The suit filed in state Supreme Court asks that the county be barred permanently from levying or collecting taxes based on new home values, which are scheduled to become final next month. It also asks the court to order and supervise new annual “scientific” property tax assessments for Nassau’s more than 386,000 residential properties. “The public record demonstrates that the countywide reassessment was performed in an extremely rushed...

The City of Austin may be forced to cut emergency services like adding more police officers and firefighters if the state legislature has its way. That's according to Austin Mayor Steve Adler, who adamantly disagrees with Senate Bill 2 (SB 2) and House Bill 2 (HB 2), which aim to cap property tax revenue for all Texas cities. The Senate passed the revenue cap bill earlier this week, which prohibits cities from raising property taxes more than 3.5% a year without a vote. A bill that has yet to pass in the House places a similar cap at 2.5% but...

Vikki L. Pryor paid $757,000 for a four-bedroom, four-bath home at 1001 N. Euclid Ave. in northeast Oak Park in August 2005, or $975,657 in today’s dollars. The home sold on Feb. 26 for $590,000, or 40 percent less than what she paid for it. Pryor’s property taxes rose over the same period. They were $9,249 when she bought the home in 2005, an effective tax rate of 0.9 percent. Last year, they were twice that -- $20,652, or 3.5 percent of her sale price. All told, Pryor paid $207,132 in property taxes over 13 years of ownership. Pryor's story...