North Dakota Considers Eliminating Property Tax

"No property tax and we would be back to serfdom. The rich could buy all of the land and then never sell causing the rest of us to be renters and hired hands all our lives. There would be no incentive to make the most of the land"

I'm not sure that's not our future anyway with so much foreclosure. The gubmint owns 80% of the mortgages so they will own all the foreclosed houses.

My kids are all convinced that home ownership is the worst investment they could make & I think that may be the reaction of the recession generation.

I can't blame them for thinking that with what they've seen the last 5 years, but how tragic for the nation if we go from "everyone should own their own home" to no one under 30 buying a home.

I can't argue with them but I want to. It's just so sad. We're planning to sell our house while we still can & either rent or buy unimproved land & go off grid just to get out from under the mortgage. I'm far more scared to become a renter again than I was to become a home owner.

Right now we have the first two options; I would be delighted to have the third. I’m not holding my breath, because the public school system would collapse immediately if it was only paid for by the “users”. The number of older people, as well as the younger generation that has for all intents & purposes stopped breeding (which has filled our school systems with “replacement Americans”), that would be exempt from subsidizing the public school system is staggering. The teachers’ unions would never allow that to happen, and they have their own political party to stop that.

My preference for a local property tax as opposed to county- or statewide redistribution was to cope with the reality on the ground, not idealistic wishful thinking.

I think if North Dakota eliminates the property tax they will be shocked at how many useless people their state can (and will have to) sustain, and how many generations people can go without ever working a job.

In the years leading up to the election of Governor Christie, buying a home in NJ was the worst move possible; at least he has stabilized the taxes (resulting in the layoffs of thousands of municipal employees to a more affordable level). It isn’t a perfect scenario, but when your family grows to a certain size your monthly rent is higher than a mortgage payment would be anyway.

One of the posters talking about the Measure 2 loss in the newspaper pointed out:

We the People: “The claim: Elderly North Dakota residents or any residents are losing their homes to property tax foreclosures.

Truth or Fiction: Mostly fiction.

Measure 2 supporters often cite the heavy tax burden on homeowners, particularly older North Dakotans, as a reason to pass the measure. But the claims are overblown, according to public records.

State law dictates that a homeowner’s property may be foreclosed upon to pay the tax debt after three years of tax delinquency. Counties, such as Williams County, administer the foreclosures when the tax debt goes unsatisfied.

The North Dakota Association of Counties surveyed county auditors about the frequency of property tax foreclosures in North Dakota. In 2010, counties foreclosed upon 637 residential homes due to delinquent property tax payments. Of those foreclosures, only eight homes were occupied and none of the homeowners were elderly.

Elderly North Dakotans also may be eligible for certain tax credits to help them stay in their homes. The Homestead Tax Credit reduces property tax payments for people who are older than 65 or disabled and who have limited incomes and assets.”

Only 8 out of the 637 homes foreclosed for taxes (statewide) was even occupied, and none of them were seniors! That confirms what many opposed to Measure 2 suspected: this was a push by out-of-state property and business owners to push the costs of local governmental services onto residents. With all the problems caused by the explosion of the oil business, North Dakota didn’t need to cut out tax revenue from out-of-state property owners and shift ALL those costs onto residents. Some estimates were that up to 30% of all property on which property taxes are levied belongs to non-residents.

Once again, thanks, good info.

There are many people that can't handle the thought of driving through North Dakota.....I look forward to it, especially when you take the back roads.

Not born there, but, from about 1 1/2 to about 13 years of age, Jamestown and Bismarck were my stomping grounds.

Great place to grow up.

100% right!

Like I said earlier, we never do own our homes here and it sucks, big time.

Here in MA 65+ year olds can get a reduction on their property taxes. Ok, fine, but still the tax is ridiculous. It's one of the reasons my Mom sold the house a few years back. My g/f’s Mom still pays thou$sand$ in property taxes every year, even with the reduction.

Those stats are deceptive. Look at a little broader picture.

What no one mentions, is that if you are going to lose your home for taxes and are on a fixed income, you'd be patently stupid to let them sell it on the courthouse steps.

Instead, you sell your home to recoup some of the investment rather than just get booted.

Of course, that means you now have no home, you are either forced to rent or move in with relatives, or just move away.

Either way, you lose your home to the taxman.

So you believe that government can do better than capitalism in managing roads. Yeah look at the horrible job they've done with government schools, public housing (government projects), EPA, TSA). These corrupt marxist, bureaucratic bastards couldn't run any of these things even if they really tried and some do but still can't . there is nothing in the Constitution that says government has the right to do any of the thousands of things they are doing like government schools. Just one example : here in this city , the city morons decided to build 18 dog parks at a cost of 25 million $ when the roads are terrible beyond belief. there are millions of examples of government insanity like this. I think private roads would work much better than government roads. Anyway they can't even build them or repair them as they pay private construction companies to do this. but the more privatization and less regulation the better, at all levels of government

It's just an abomination to me that people actually trust government to do things such as schools, roads , housing , hospitals etc.

Government doesn't work, is inherently corrupt as these marxist, nanny state , government bastards are unaccountable and corrupt marxist bastards.

Look in a private business you are accountable to the bottome line: so that means that you have to produce someone is willing to pay hard earned money for and that you have to be efficient, and please your customers. So you are accountable to your customers and to the bottom line. further more with competition , only the ones that are good succeed. there is no competition in government as they dictate to you what to do. Government bureaucrats are not accountable to the people. Try to tell the TSA what to do next time you are in an airport. If you have a problem with a bank, or restaurant , whatever you can call the manager and sometimes they listen to you but try that with the EPA, IRS, or TSA or the coming bloomberg soda police.

Government/socialism doesn't work. IN 99% of the cases capitalism can do a 1000 times better than government( yes in roads ,schools too).

Just one example: The EPA is crippling America's industries because of a lie called global warming. And this lie was created by government funded fake research at universities and institutions which rely on government funding. So all this research was all fake , bogus. there is no global warming. But the government says there is so they are shutting down coal power plants, industry etc. because they say oil, coal etc. are “dirty”, cause global warming and are destroying the planet. but all of that is a lie. you think the free market would have come up with decades of fake research and an EPA?

need more examples look the government housing projects of the government schools, the government funded decades of fake global warming research.

As you say, in a private business, you are accountable to the bottom line. It may be the case that private-sector competition would lead to fantastic roads, in areas where people were willing and able to pay for them (although, given how costly roads are to build and maintain, it’s unlikely there would be very much competition - you’d end up with a monopoly/oligopoly situation in most areas).

The problem is that, if there is no customer base willing and able to pay for a particular stretch of road, a private business simply will not pay for that stretch of road. There are plenty of low population-density areas that have relatively lightly-trafficked roads. It would never benefit a company’s bottom line to build such a road. How would these roads ever get built or maintained under your approach?

I'm not sure that's not our future anyway with so much foreclosure. The gubmint owns 80% of the mortgages so they will own all the foreclosed houses. My kids are all convinced that home ownership is the worst investment they could make & I think that may be the reaction of the recession generation. I can't blame them for thinking that with what they've seen the last 5 years, but how tragic for the nation if we go from "everyone should own their own home" to no one under 30 buying a home. I can't argue with them but I want to. It's just so sad. We're planning to sell our house while we still can & either rent or buy unimproved land & go off grid just to get out from under the mortgage. I'm far more scared to become a renter again than I was to become a home owner.

I know what you're saying and I've thought about this a lot. I'd like to see tax reform where we have just two main taxes, 10% income and a floating acreage tax. The government would be constitutionally limited to ownership of 8% of the land. This would open up a lot of government land to private ownership. The other 92% of the land would have an acreage tax floating to where 1/10 to 1/3 of one percent of the land would go unsold due to the tax rate. That would mean that there would always be land available to be bought at near 0 dollars, just pay the tax rate. Since scrubland would determine the rate, the price of land in some places would be very low for a family just starting out on one lot (1/3 of an acre). They would be financially free to build, and buildings would not be taxed.

The bottom line is our taxes and fees we have currently is skewing all parts of our lives.

Yes, I don't like the thought of a fraud disability collector inheriting a million acres and never having to lift a finger in making the land productive. There has to be some check for this, and a low property tax would eliminate this problem.

Here in NJ many people have opted for the renters/hired hands option in part BECAUSE OF the property taxes. In the past, the taxes could be dealt with because we had better-paying jobs, and you would deduct them on your federal income tax return (and often get a rebate from the state as well). Now many of our good jobs have left; as a result, marriage/childbearing is dropping off (so less people need the space of a separate home), and people want to have the option to follow the jobs (”Grapes of Wrath” style). The income is not there to either pay the taxes or really benefit from the federal income tax deduction anyway, so houses either remain unsold or go to “replacement Americans” who promply section it into apartments or rooms for rent (legally or otherwise). In the years leading up to the election of Governor Christie, buying a home in NJ was the worst move possible; at least he has stabilized the taxes (resulting in the layoffs of thousands of municipal employees to a more affordable level). It isn’t a perfect scenario, but when your family grows to a certain size your monthly rent is higher than a mortgage payment would be anyway.

Yes, there is no check on high these taxes are pushed. In my previous post I spoke of a self-adjusting floating rate. I think that would be very good for home-ownership.

“Governor Christie fixed that in NJ with a property tax cap; when teachers get 4% raises, and taxes can only increase 2%, untenured teachers and cops lose their jobs. This isn’t just theory, it already happened (and is why Obama is talking about re-hiring teachers and cops).”

It amazing how much one good leader can do. It can offset years of bad leadership and abuse of power by government.

By the way, government doesn't build roads as they pay private construction companies to build roads. So if government is so good why not allow them to build the roads too?

You believe government is more efficient than the free market and capitalism (at least in this example of roads). And i disagree with you. See it's difficult for us humans to answer your question “How would these roads ever get built or maintained under your approach?”

no one is that smart to plan a roads market. Only the free market can do that. See the free market and capitalism created the cell phone industry for example. No single human planned that. who in 1970 could have planned and implemented that ( no one even imagined the cell phone industry then) . ditto for personal computers, smart phone industry or any number of industries( no government , no human planned that). One of the problems with socialism is that socialists and many brainwashed by the media think that a human can plan and run such things as the whole Internet or a cell phone/smart phone industry. A human can't and doesn't have to as capitalism did that by itself . But many including you (sorry you've been brainwashed by the media) believe that central planning ( ie a human directing all this) is superior to capitalism/free market. Not only can't a human plan this but we are talking about a government goon that is corrupt, unaccountable and usually driven by socialist ideology like a green agenda or social justice or wealth redistribution etc. not as the free market is driven by the bottom line as a goal or being efficient. Am I making any sense here? I am short for time and I am not a proffesional writer.

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