Comments on: NY has highest property tax – $8422 in some areas! Unlike California!

By: madhaus

madhaus — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:19:09 +0000

This is one of my various beefs with Prop 13. Corporations should not be covered by it. There have been numerous deals, big ones, structured to avoid Prop 13 reassment using all kinds of maneuvering. I think Valley Fair might be one of them because it’s changed hands several times but they set up some kind of bizarre partnership/stock deal that stopped it from happening. I may be confusing Valley Fair with another big development but I know this happens all the time.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:58:07 +0000

> Turnover in residential property must be quite a bit greater than
> for commericial property, eh? I’m still letting the implications sink in.

Yeah… the only thing saving us paying residential property taxes is the need to reassess commercial property taxes when new building gets done. I hope this means that the owners of Valley Fair got reassessed each time they added on to the mall, and that they’re not still paying 1976-era taxes.

Strange but true: this page

http://www.democracyctr.org/library/california/prop13.htm

says that Arco, Southern California Edison, the Southern Pacific railroad, and Standard Oil all were opponents of Proposition 13 even though they were likely to receive much of the benefit of the property tax restrictions…

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:45:13 +0000

Santa Clara County Office of the Assessor annual reports are here. The numbers I quoted were from the 2008-2009 report.

http://www.sccassessor.org/portal/site/asr/agencyarticle?path=%2Fv7%2FAssessor%2C%20Office%20of%20the%20%28ELO%29%2FWelcome%20%28Media%20Releases%2C%20Assessor%20Bio%2C%20Organizational%20Chart%2C%20and%20more%29&contentId=e050bb3166b34010VgnVCMP2200049dc4a92____&cpsextcurrchannel=1

If that link doesn’t go through, go to http://www.sccassessor.org, then select the “Welcome” section, then the section on annual reports.

By: anon

anon — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:01:18 +0000

i dun get it.

By: nomadic

nomadic — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:10:40 +0000

Wow, Robert, nice work.

I’m staggered by this part: They also have a chart showing that residential property paid only 50% of property taxes in 1977, but now pays almost 70% of the property taxes.

Turnover in residential property must be quite a bit greater than for commericial property, eh? I’m still letting the implications sink in.

By: NY has highest property tax - $8422 in some areas! Unlike California! | Survival Food Kits, Tools, Gear

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:00:02 +0000

[...] the rest of the post here: NY has highest property tax – $8422 in some areas! Unlike California! Posted in ARTICLES: Survival | Leave a [...]

By: burbed

burbed — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:28:16 +0000

Could you share out the link to the report you cited?

By: burbed

burbed — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 18:26:53 +0000

Wow. Thanks for your data and analysis!

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:56:04 +0000

I’ll guess the bigger difference between Westchester and Santa Clara County property taxes will be commercial property taxes (which isn’t mentioned by the NY Post article.) California commercial property taxes follow the same rules as residential; the assessed value can only go up 2% a year max, and the assessed value only gets brought up to market levels when the property changes ownership or when major construction work is done. Change of control isn’t enough if I remember correctly, as there’s lots of ways to structure a deal so that the reassessment isn’t triggered.

In the Assessor’s report, the three biggest taxpayers in Santa Clara County are PG&E ($21 million), Blackhawk Development ($16 million), and Cisco ($15 million). They also have a chart showing that residential property paid only 50% of property taxes in 1977, but now pays almost 70% of the property taxes.

By: Robert

Robert — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 17:43:09 +0000

That’s *median* property taxes for Westchester. Although there’s lots of people paying $8,000 or more in property taxes here in the beautiful Santa Clara Valley, I’d guess that the median is going to be less. If you bought thirty years ago, you’re paying hardly anything. If you inherited a house twenty years ago, your property taxes were set to the market value then. All the long term landlords on your street are also paying a pittance.

I searched around to guess at what the average assessed value is. The best figure I found was from the County Assessor’s 2008-2009 annual report. The report says that this year, the average assessed value of a house in Santa Clara county was around 46% of the average sale price. If the average sale price in the County is around $700K (for a mix of condos and houses, and that’s my guess), that means the average tax bill would be on a house worth $322,000, and the average tax bill would be $6440. That still needs to be increased a bit for the various added taxes, so the average is maybe around $7,000.

So with that money, something like 45% goes to the schools, with the rest going to the county, the state, the cities, the junior college system, etc.

Hmmm… that’s not as wildly different as I would have expected from Westchester. Maybe Prop 13’s not strangling us as much as I would have thought.