The rollback stands to save the average family between $200 and $300 per year, so about $4.50 a week. The property tax for the average family has gone up $910 in the last six years. So the rollback will be great for helping those families pay off a quarter of their property taxes. Bear in mind also that property taxes hit the elderly and people on fixed incomes hardest. These are the people most likely to need public assistance if the cost of living keeps rising, putting a further toll on state and local budgets. Still Going the Wrong Direction. Not too many Results to be had.
And Patricks plan may be the only way that taxes get cut at all. Again, rolling back the income tax is simply going to short us on necessary budget items. The money will have to come from somewhere, meaning it is likely to get shifted to – wait for it – local property taxes.
So we have two options:
Cut 2 Taxes: Fund cities and towns -> get schools, roads, and safety we need -> cut property taxes and fees -> lower the cost of living -> attract jobs and residents -> boost the economy -> rollback income tax(?) OR
Cut 1 Tax: Make immediate or gradual cuts to the income tax -> drain the treasury and Rainy Day Fund to pay for them -> further deplete local aid -> raise property taxes and local fees
So yes, Mr. Reilly, Patrick really is for it all. For helping cities and towns. For relieving the pressure on property taxes and local fees. For lowering the cost of living. For attracting jobs and people to Massachusetts.
Not merely for a politically expedient rollback.
The first election I ever voted in was when Jim Gilmore ran on the No Car Tax platform and became Governor of Virginia in 97. He drove us, no pun intended, straight into economic oblivion, and only managed to shift around the car tax burden it is now paid through 30% municipal taxes, with the remaining 70% subsidized by state taxes. Dont believe the hype, and when the general rolls around, dont let Healey and her gimmickry kick us around on taxes.
at least about the issue of rising property taxes, even though he and his wife rent. He highlights the problem in his latest ad. Too bad his proposed miniscule income tax decrease is going to exacerbate the problem he seems so concerned about.
For renters who live in 2 or 3 family houses especially, rising property taxes are the largest source of rent increases, from what I’ve seen. Renters don’t often realize that’s what’s going on, because the landlord just tells them what the new rent will be and they figure that’s just the cost of rent going up in the area. But last year on Jesse Gordon’s campaign for Cambridge City Council, we focused on an unfair property reassessment in Cambridge that raised taxes disproportionately on 2 and 3 family homes, and we did get a number of stories from renters whose landlords explicitly told them, “I have to raise your rent by X because my property tax just went up by Y and this is how much I need to be able to afford that tax” – and we heard the same from homeowners who have tenants.
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It’s unfortunate that most renters don’t think of this, because it’d be a much more potent political issue if they did (and it deserves to be).
I forgot to mention the impact on rental properties here, though it is floating around somewhere in notes that I wrote.
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The salient, most electorally charged point is that Patrick has the best plan to reduce the cost of living in Massachusetts, and his plan involves doing so without jeopardizing our fiscal stability or boring voters with confusing “percentage of revenue per annum after inflation rates” contingencies.
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It’s simple: More local aid for better planning = Lower property taxes and lower cost of living.
Rent inflation has been very benign in New England and throughout the US. Look at increase since 1998
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Boston rents have increased 12% over 5 years! That’s it.
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BTW, it’s also the reason that CPI ‘appears’ to be low: CPI includes the rent statistic, and not the cost of a new house.
I’d like to see statistics for “percentage of renter population who have had at least one rent increase greater than 10% in a single year, since 1998” and the same for percentage who’ve had that happen twice since 1998. If you ranked metro areas on that, I’d be surprised if Boston didn’t make the top 10. Actually, mildly surprised if Boston weren’t in the top 5.
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Property taxes are hit and miss – their almost random inequality is one of the main reasons they’re such a bad tax to rely on. We do have a lot of people whose rent has been stable, which brings down the average, but doesn’t help those who are being hit hard – we have a lot of those, too.
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The unfair property tax reassessment that Jesse campaigned against last year, actually reduced some people’s property taxes. On average, property taxes didn’t go up by a lot. But for thousands of homeowners, they went up by more than 20% (for hundreds, by more than 200%!) in one year, and a significant number of people were forced out of Cambridge by the increase.
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If we had “a lot” of the latter, then the rent statistic would have increased more than the 12% over 5 years. We don’t have ‘a lot of those’. At least, that what the statistics tell me.
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Rent inflation has been very small because of vertical mobility.
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Rent apparently became very negatively price elastic (i.e. rent increase = decrease in demand), then, when landlords tried to raise rent, renters tended to move out or move out and buy.
You have a good point about the past few years. Rents shot up in the 90s, then people could no longer afford them, and starting around 2003 I actually saw rents decrease in some places. Perhaps 1998-2006 is not the best period to look at – rents around here were already far too high by 1998, and I think we’re at a short term trough now.