Average Minnesota property tax increase at record low

//Paul and Rachel, my property value went down for the 3rd year in a row. It was at $260,000 3 or 4 years ago. This year it’s at $204,000 which is $10,000+ less than last year but my property tax is higher by $350+ so I frankly think your arguements just don’t hold water.

Nila, I make no argument, I’m simply reporting what my proposed property tax statement tells me.

As to all these explanations, yes I know all this, but my home is the very definition of a median home and home value in Henn Co. It’s valued at $193,000 this year, and it was $210,000 in 2008. Not a huge drop. My property taxes have gone up steadily at around 9% for the last three years. My house is 60% of the housing stock in SLP, Golden Valley, and Richfield. I just find it hard to believe that my property is that unique. All the post war cape cod houses in the first ring suburbs have done a good job of retaining value, that’s a lot of houses. We’ve got foreclosed properties, but we haven’t seen 20%-30$ loss of value- more like 5%-15%. And yes, I see how that could drive my particular levy up, but that’s my point, my circumstance is not that unusual, so how many properties are there like mine? They have the data, they can break it down and tell us quartiles or whatever in terms of the percentages of people who are seeing what increases. I’d have see that data before I’d buy the argument that most of us are seeing a big decrease in property tax increases.

Statistics can be tricky, especially if your relying on averages. You can have a low average that doesn’t reflect the majority of circumstances. I’d like to see the mean (average), median, and mode (range that occurs with the most frequency). What I’m saying you could have a report that says averages are low, but still a majority of people are seeing above that average tax hike. If that’s the case, this information is misleading.

I’m not complaining about the my taxes, we’d all be paying lower over-all tax rate had it not been for the Republican income tax cuts. If you restored LGA and the income tax none of your local levies would have risen by anywhere neat this much.

Yes Rebecca, there is no economic data to support the notion of superior private sector efficiency. Such efficiency is simply a matter of faith in some circles. In fact, many studies have shown that the public sector does more with fewer resources more efficiently than the private sector. For instance the VA and Medicaid have for years now rated the highest in customer satisfaction and they have fraction of the administrative costs of any private sector insurer or provider.

By the way, Jeff, Thanks for taking the extra time to look into my circumstance, I appreciate it. I just suspect something hinky is going on with those averages. In order for median properties like mine to be seeing almost a ten fold increase over the zero average Henn is reporting, a significant number of properties would have to be getting massive cuts it seems to me. Is anyone here who lives in Henn Co. seeing a 10% cut in the proposed property taxes? If there is, I’d really to see those properties. If there is, my guess, bank owned forclosures. But I have no data to support my suspicions so I could be way off.

//Interesting how people are ready, willing and able to call out a statistical snow job when it’s affecting them directly.

It’s even more interesting how people fail to comprehend statistics when they directly effect them. No matter how many statistics you throw at some people they still think trickle down economics and low taxes for the healthy benefit everyone when they really do is make the wealthy wealthier.

Speaking of Statistics: David, Pawlenty increased your over-all tax burden by pushing it down to the local governments. It’s simple math, whatever city, or county you live in has fewer people than the state of MN as whole. So when you have to make up for budget cuts locally it increases your individual share. There around five million people in MN. Let’s say you have 50,000 in your city, and lose a million dollars of LGA. That million used to cost you twenty cents when it was state money, now it will cost you twenty dollars because you have to raise it locally. This is how your $300 tax cut ended up costing you $1,200. Pawlenty didn’t hold your taxes down, he increased them, this was predictable, and it was predicted. We’ve seen it before, the same thing happened under Reagan on a national level. I don’t know what “gate” you think Pawlenty was holding but he didn’t hold taxes down, and he never balanced the budget, and that has not been a good thing for you.

Craig, and everyone else who’s been whining about your property taxes… look there’s a reason we have (or had) multiple streams of tax revenue. While property taxes work well for some types of revenue there are inherent inequities built into them. That’s why we also have income taxes, sales taxes etc. The problem with property taxes is they push all expenses down to a local level where there are huge discrepancies in population and property value. The cost of government has nothing to do with the value of your home. The price of the gas that runs the snow plows for instance is not tied to your home value, but you have to buy the gas anyways. State aid cushions you by deriving that revenue from a larger population and lowering your individual share. Multiple revenue streams create a buffer. Since local government cannot collect income tax, they must use property taxes and they can only collect them locally. So yeah, though the value of your home has decreased, the cost of your services have not, and you’ve lost the state money you used to be getting (thank Pawlenty for that). I’m sorry but you should have done the math before signed off on your tax cut and refused to put another $5.00 into the state pot. That five dollar break is now costing you twenty.

As far as your salary is concerned, taxes in and of themselves do not make or break economies. The reason we’re in a recession is trickle down economics that magnified wealth disparity and over-financialized the economy. Tax policy eventually compounded the problem by creating huge government deficits and restricting governments ability to regulate and respond to crises. The financial sector took advantage of the situation (as they always do) and the resulting white collar crime wave wrecked the economy, as it always does. We could eliminate all your taxes at this point and it wouldn’t get you a raise, or a job. In fact, history has shown that the best way to stimulate the economy is massive government spending. Typically the government deficit spends but we came into this recession with record deficits (due to Bush’s tax cuts and spending) on the books to start with, and we’re paying the lowest level of taxes in hundred years despite being at war and racking up trillions of dollars of bailouts for the private sector.

Yes Rebecca, it was your brilliantly efficient private sector that dragged us into this recession, not the government. Auto companies were handing out credit like candy to guys like Hecker, and banks can’t even figure out who actually owns the properties they’re foreclosing, and the government has had to bail them all out… and you think the government is inefficient?

Since the advent of modern democracy, no government has dragged a nation into recession, it’s always private sector excess that creates recessions. The most stable economic period in history was period from WWII until the mid 70s, when we had tax brackets as high as 92%. Then we started deregulating the economy and defunding government (except for military spending) and now we’re right back to 1929 and the Guilded Age that preceded.

So anyways, that’s why your property taxes go up even though your property value has gone down. I’m sorry but the only people who didn’t see this coming were faith based economists who think tax cuts and small government are the answer to everything. The more tax cut you get, the more small government you get, the worse it will get.

I always laugh when I see fetishism for the wealthy pretending to be economic theory.

//@Paul. I did not say the private sector was “brilliantly efficient”. I merely said that it is better than government. Your use of hyperbole does not do a thing to support the continued unnecessary spending in government.

Rebecca, you’re statement is simply incoherent. “Better” at what? The private sector and the public sector perform completely different functions. The difference between the private and public sectors is not efficiency, it’s mission. The public sector provides public services and does not seek to generate a profit. The private sector provides only those services and products that generate a profit. How can the private sector be “better” at doing what it doesn’t do?

The problem with the “small” government ideology is it simply ignores economic reality. It pretends that everything can be done for a profit, and that profitability will ensure efficiency. This simply flies in the face of all historical experience. Civilized nations ended up with public sectors for a reason, there are a variety services that the private sector has no inclination or capability to provide. Furthermore, profit does not ensure efficiency, in fact it can increase inefficiency. Some of the most inefficient entities on the planet are huge multinational corporations earning massive profits (Think BP and Gulf oil spill).

Efficiency isn’t a shrewd Republican insight, it’s common sense. No one… NO ONE is championing inefficiency. We all want our government to do whatever it does as efficiently as possible. Republicans have been promising more efficient government for forty years and they have never never never never delivered. Why? because the government simply isn’t as inefficient as they claim it is in the first place. Deficits are not caused by inefficiency, they are caused by revenue shortfalls. This is why no one has ever “efficiency’d” their way out of a deficit.

Nothing is perfectly efficient, that’s actually a physical law of the universe. Can government be more efficient? Surely and that’s what we all want. Can we significantly reduce the cost of our government with efficiencies? The available data says no. That’s not a reason to accept inefficiency, but it tells us that that’s not where the real money is. Why is our government relatively efficient? Because by and large our government is not very corrupt. The most inefficient governments tend to the ones that a are subject to massive corruption. Here’s the thing, the more you privatize, the more you cut government salaries, the more you allow government capture by the private sector… the more corrupt a government tends to be. You saw this in action when Bush put his small government ideology to the test during and after hurricane Katrina, and in the Iraq war. The irony of the small government agenda is that it ends up increasing inefficiency, this is why despite decades of government cuts and privatization we’re still looking at a record deficit. This is why corruption has run rampant through through Republican party (witness Tom Delay’s downfall amongst many others) despite their frequent and constant promises to “clean up” the government. The problem with contracting out government work is… politicians get to decide who gets the contracts.

Be honest Rebecca, when you talk about “cleaning up” government, when you say we can save 20%-30%; you’re making that up. You have no data or information to support those figures. We’re supposed to take your word for it that we can save that money without cutting our services. Problem is we’ve heard this before, it’s a bait and switch. Be honest, you’re idea of an “efficient” government is one that doesn’t do a lot of the stuff that it’s currently doing… but that’s not efficiency, that’s policy. You’re not going to get the government to do what it’s doing for 20%-30% less, you’re just going to get the government to do 20%-30% less than it’s doing.

So be honest so we can have an honest discussion. Let’s talk about what we want the government to do and not do. Let’s talk about what services and programs you want to cut. Let’s not pretend this is about efficiency. I know it’s frustrating Rebecca but you don’t to declare what’s “necessary” and what’s “unnecessary” spending. Those are policy decisions, and you live in a democracy where your fellow citizens have a say.