What is the solution to the Lakewood financial issues caused, generated and fueled by Township officials, Township Departments, Special interest groups, etc.???
TAX - REVOLT
Many areas in the country are starting tax revolts, recalls on elected officials, bringing coruption out to the open, etc.
Talk to your friends, neighbors, etc
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
As Home Values Fall, Property Tax Revolt Brews
ReplyDeleteIn many cities across the US, homeowners are filing record numbers of assessment appeals, wanting their property taxes to reflect their shrinking value of their houses.
By PATRIK JONSSON
ATLANTA, April 5, 2009 —
Homeowners watching the value of their houses slowly ebb are storming tax offices from Ann Arbor, Mich., to Atlanta, demanding that county officials reassess their homes and lower their property taxes.
It is a question of fairness, says Gene Burleson of Atlanta, who stood in line April 1 to appeal his assessment. His house has lost 25 percent of its value since it was last assessed, he adds: "I'm just trying to insulate myself from coming tax increases."
Property taxes have become a rallying point for disgruntled Americans because, unlike sales or income taxes, they can be challenged directly by individual citizens: Some 40 percent of assessment appeals are successful. Yet the movement threatens already stressed counties, putting the tax receipts that pays for schools and police at risk.
"The property tax is the only tax where [a citizen] can go in and eyeball the guy," says Billy Cook, executive director of the Institute for Professionals in Taxation in Atlanta, noting that appeals often lead to small-claims-style hearings to press one's case against the county's tax valuation.
"Think of all the taxes in the U.S.: The taxpayer renders their returns and the government audits to make sure you do it right," adds Cook. "The only tax where the taxpayer audits the government is the property tax."
In many areas across the U.S., home values have dropped so rapidly that assessors have not been able to keep up. Even as their home values depreciate, homeowners are likely to see increases in their tax rates, because appraisals sometimes have been done years earlier.
"You have a lot of things coming together right now" resulting in the rush on tax assessors' offices, says Joan Youngman of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass. "You have homeowners knowing that the value has dropped. You have rapid shifts in the market. And on top of that, it's harder for assessors. ... It's more likely that there'll be inaccuracies now than when everything is stable."
Tax Appeals From Georgia to Nevada
Assessment appeals are up in cities nationwide:
In metro Atlanta, more than 50,000 people -- a 10-fold increase over last year -- filed appeals ahead of the April 1 tax deadline. The result was long lines of grumbling taxpayers. Little wonder: A survey released Tuesday said average home prices in Atlanta are down to 1996 levels.
In Scio Township, Mich., record numbers of appeal-seekers flooded Town Hall recently to batter the Board of Equalization with questions and complaints.
In Nevada's Lyon County, appeals are up 30-fold. One reason: Unemployment is at 15 percent, the highest in the state.
Some assessors say the trend is being driven more by dramatic headlines than by real shifts in property values.
"I think there's a genuine concern for what property values have done, but I think there's also a reaction to national headlines that are reflective of markets in far worse condition than ours," says Phil Hogsed, chief assessor of Georgia's Cobb County, north of Atlanta.
Still, the onslaught highlights the delicate balance of property-tax assessments. While the tax assessor's job is technically nonpolitical -- they assess value, while politicians set the tax rate based on that value for their revenue needs -- there's constant pressure to keep valuations high to maximize revenue.
Assessments can be political, as a recent Supreme Court case in Nevada showed. The court ruled that dramatic differences in assessments in different counties bordering Lake Tahoe suggested that more than just the real value of the homes and properties was taken into account.
"Politicians ... put pressure on the local assessor to keep that value as high as possible so they don't have to raise the tax rate," says Cook of the Institute for Professionals in Taxation.
Given what's happening now, however, elected officials will be under increasing pressure to debate publicly the prospect of higher taxes to fund government, Cook says. Many states' expenditures were growing by 10 percent a year before the recession began.
"If house prices are down 30 percent in any given market, then the property tax rate has got to go up ... or the government's got to shrink by 30 percent something's got to give," says John Baen, a real estate expert at the University of North Texas in Denton. "Any taxing authority taxing real estate is always [eager] to increase values based on a few select sales of some cherry-picked, high-priced properties ... yet on the way down they're slow to react."
Why Appeal Taxes? 'I Just Don't Believe the Assessment'
Atlanta IT specialist Jacquay Waller stood in line this week at the Fulton County government complex. He bought his house in the Sandtown neighborhood for $350,000 two years ago. The county assessed it at $380,000. If he were to sell it today, Waller doesn't think he'd get more than $250,000, based on comparable sales in the neighborhood.
"I just don't believe the assessment," says Waller. "I just don't want to pay more in taxes on an amount that I could never sell it for."
In good times, few people worried about their assessments and even saw high valuations as a good omen for their properties. Now, especially for those homeowners who bought at the height of the market, those values are a burden.
"People who bought in recent times at the highest prices are the ones whose values have fallen tremendously," says Tom Richardson, a tax attorney in Ann Arbor, Mich., which has seen a record number of tax appeals this year. "It's the people who have taken the worst hit who are now at risk.
Along with looming tax increases, those shaky valuations are forcing a secondary standoff between government and the people, says Sharron Angle, a former Nevada assemblywoman: "When people don't feel like they can spend money because the government is going to tax them, and [homeowners] need money to forestall whatever attack the government is going to make on their pocketbook, it pits the government against the people and stagnates the economy."
The National Taxpayer Union, an antitax lobbying group in Washington, claims that as many as 60 percent of homes in the U.S. are overassessed. For the 722,000 homes in New Jersey that are potentially overassessed, average savings on the tax bill could equal nearly $2,000, according to the website EasyTaxFix.com.
"It's a muddled situation out there with what is a house's true value right now," says Verenda Smith, a spokeswoman for the Federation of Tax Administrators in Washington. "Everything is just an educated guess."
"The standard wisdom is that homeowners win on the upside and lose on the downside and over time that evens out," she says. "But they don't want to hear that it evens out when they're worried about their job and their house value."
Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures
Print | Close this window
ReplyDeleteCalifornia's anti-tax crusaders talk revolt
Wed Apr 8, 2009 9:29am EDT
By Dan Whitcomb
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Taking inspiration from a landmark 1970s tax revolt, a determined group of activists say the moment is right for another voter uprising in California, where recession-battered residents have been hit with the highest income and sales tax rates in the nation.
And like Proposition 13, the 1978 ballot measure that transformed the state's political landscape and ignited tax-reform movements nationwide, they see the next backlash coming not from either major political party, but from the people.
If the anti-tax crusaders can galvanize voter discontent, they hope to roll back the latest tax hikes, impose permanent, iron-clad spending caps on Sacramento lawmakers and make the issue central in the 2010 gubernatorial election.
"There's a lot of latent anger boiling to the surface out there," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a group named after the California anti-tax crusader who spearheaded Prop 13.
An angry mob of thousands converged on an Orange County parking lot in southern California on a recent Saturday morning for an anti-tax protest, stunning even the organizers with the size of the turnout. It was just one in a series of public demonstrations that have cropped up around the state.
Talk of a brewing tax revolt has been largely ignored by the mainstream media, and many political analysts are skeptical, though they concede that the taxpayer mutiny that led to the landmark Prop 13 was similarly dismissed by political professionals.
That referendum passed in a landslide despite furious opposition from the political establishment -- and highlighted the possibilities for grassroots campaigners to enact measures with ballot initiatives and bypass the legislature.
It slashed property tax rates by 57 percent, capped future collections and required any new tax hikes to be approved by a two-thirds majority in both houses of the state legislature.
'CONDITIONS ARE RIPE'
"There's no way to predict whether we're going to see a reprise of the revolt that led to Prop 13 or whether this is a false start," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and a onetime adviser to presidential candidate Sen. John McCain.
"But the economic conditions are ripe for tax revolt, and advances in technology certainly make it easier to organize a coalition without access to huge amounts of money."
Those conditions include a heavy tax burden that is growing heavier plus a worsening economy.
California already had the highest income tax rates of any state in the country when the legislature raised them in February to help close a $42 billion deficit that also required deep spending cuts and additional borrowing.
The state's top income tax rate is now 10.425 percent, which is 1.5 percentage points higher than second-place Rhode Island and rises to 10.55 percent if certain economic triggers are hit. Most U.S. states have a top rate of less than 7 percent, and seven collect no income tax at all.
California lawmakers also boosted the state's sales tax to 8.25 percent, nearly doubled the vehicle license fee and sharply reduced the tax credit for dependents.
Though Prop 13 has become sacrosanct in California politics, it has its critics, who blame it for forcing the state to rely too heavily on sales and income taxes and limiting a critical funding source for public schools.
The state, which was hard hit by the subprime mortgage crisis, faces sharply declining revenues and an unemployment rate over 10 percent.
"I certainly don't want my taxes raised but one thing I do recognize is that we are in the middle of a financial meltdown," California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a Democrat, told Reuters in an interview.
"We have a constitutional obligation to balance the budget so we had no choice" but to raise taxes, Bass said. "Unfortunately when you fan the flames you can lead to things like a revolt but I'm certainly hoping it doesn't deteriorate to that."
'MASSIVE DISCONNECT'
Analysts also say the anti-tax revolutionaries would be met with fierce opposition from California's public employee unions, a powerful political force with considerably more money and unmatched influence over the Democrat-led legislature.
But the activists are undaunted by doubters within the establishment.
"Every chamber of commerce, every editorial board, every labor group, every tax-receiver group, everybody opposed Prop 13 except the voters," Coupal told Reuters. "That reflects a massive disconnect between the real people and the political elite, and that disconnect is right now as great as I've ever seen it."
The first test of anti-tax crusaders' influence could come in a May 19 special election with voting on Proposition 1A, which is backed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders and would extend the tax increases in exchange for a new cap on spending.
At the Orange County anti-tax rally, sponsored by two radio talk show hosts, voters' resentment erupted as they chanted slogans, waved placards and demanded action in the state capital Sacramento.
"There was a huge amount of anger," said John Kobylt, talk show host on KFI-AM 640. "It was visceral. You could feel it. You could almost touch it. It was almost frightening to be out there. It was a tremendous expression of hatred over what's going on."
(Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Steve Gorman)
© Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved. Users may download and print extracts of content from this website for their own personal and non-commercial use only. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters and its logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of the Thomson Reuters group of companies around the world.
Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
Home
ReplyDeleteTax Revolt 2009 is about taxpayers restoring and protecting our lost freedoms. This nation was founded as government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Sacramento has become government of special interests, by unaccountable lawmakers, for the public sector unions.
Recall
You must hold Sacramento lawmakers accountable. Californians pay the highest income and sales taxes in the nation - while we suffer job losses, pay cuts, and dwindling 401k’s. Hold Sacramento accountable.
Recall Arnold Schwarznegger
Recall Jeff Miller
Recall Jim Silva
Recall Roy Ashburn
Repeal
Taxpayers must repeal the largest state tax increases in the nation’s history. Californians pay the highest state income tax and sales taxes in the nation. We must roll back these tax increases.
Repeal Proposition 1A
Reform
Recalls and repeals are not enough. While recalls hold lawmakers accountable and repeals undo their harm, only one thing will prevent future harm - reform. Californians must unite to rein in state spending through the initiative process. We must limit taxes by limiting spending – our own spending and spending by the Legislature.
Ballot Box Budgeting Reform.