N.J. – 13 of 20 Most Taxed Counties in Nation
New Jersey has 13 of the 20 most taxed counties in the Nation according to a new study by the Tax Foundation for owner-occupied homes located in counties that have populations of over 20,000. According to the study, the ranking of the counties with the highest property tax burden is as follows:
Westchester County, New York ($7,908)
Nassau County, New York ($7,726)
Hunterdon County, New Jersey ($7,708)
Bergen County, New Jersey ($7,370)
Somerset County, New Jersey ($7,201)
Essex County, New Jersey ($7, 149)
Rockland County, New York ($7,066)
Morris County, New Jersey ($6,977)
Union County, New Jersey ($6,727)
Passaic County, New Jersey ($6,673)
Putnam County, New York ($6,553)
Suffolk County, New York ($6,502)
Monmouth County, New Jersey ($6,360)
Hudson County, New Jersey ($5,865)
Lake County, Illinois ($5,790)
Fairfield County, Connecticut ($5,694)
Sussex County, New Jersey ($5,677)
Middlesex County, New Jersey ($5,575)
Mercer County, New Jersey ($5,457)
Warren County, New Jersey ($5,228)
Source: The Tax Foundation
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New Jersey, What Not To Do
To read the full article by the Wall Street Journal click the words Property Tax.
This Blog/Web Site is made available for educational purposes only general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice. By using this blog site you understand that there is no attorney client relationship between you and the Blog/Web Site publisher.
N.J. is # 1 for Highest State-Local Taxes
This Blog/Web Site is made available for educational purposes only general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice. By using this blog site you understand that there is no attorney client relationship between you and the Blog/Web Site publisher.
Tax Foundation Debunks Anti-Obama Tax Smear
You don’t have to have a thousand unread messages in your inbox to believe that sometimes email is a bad thing. An example: apparently an anti-Barack-Obama screed has been circulating via email that lists a dozen of Obama’s alleged tax proposals, all of which (in the email) amount to taxing basically every American. Each of these proposals makes it sounds like he’s going to go after everyone’s firstborn son.
But as the Tax Foundation helpfully points out, basically every assertion made in this email is false.
Some of the assertions in the email (“Obama would tax all capital gains on home sales at 28 percent”) can’t possibly be reasonably construed from anything Barack Obama has ever said or written. In other words, it’s not a matter of some knucklehead doing his best to understand Obama’s plan and just mis-interpreting it. Somebody went out and just lied– made up a bunch of the nastiest stuff they could think of about Obama and called it the truth.
Hard to say how far afield this email has traveled. A quick Google search on specific phrases within the email reveals that it can be found on some very entertaining websites. For example, next time you find yourself poking around on “forums.gunbroker.com,” you can find the email here. The Iowa John Birch Society is all over it too. While it’s distressing to see it posted approvingly anywhere, the good news is that each of these web forums allows readers to comment, and sensible folks have already pointed out that the email in question is completely unsubstantiated.
More pernicious is a website with the harmless-sounding name www.before-you-vote-2008.info/ that has posted the offending email in its entirety, in apparent approval of its contents right here. As long as this idiot wants to keep shelling out $20 a year to own this web domain, he can leave the anti-Obama email in all its unexamined glory as long as he wants.
Of course, in the end, if any American voter reads the anti-Obama email and believes it uncritically, that’s their fault for being lazy. And one could optimistically hope that no one would be that lazy. But the underlying problem is that tax policy is complicated enough that it’s not all that easy to verify or (as is universally true in the case of this email) disprove assertions about candidates’ tax plans.
And even if people don’t explicitly believe the specific assertions made in the email, the theory animating the sender was probably that if you tell a lie enough times about someone, it does affect your perception of them– even if you don’t explicitly believe it’s true.
Someone I respect greatly, who is nonetheless a pessimist about human nature, once gave me the following metaphor for how elections are won and lost: presidential campaigns are like a picture window. One party has a red magic marker and the other candidate has a blue magic marker. Every time the Republicans run an ad, they’re putting a red dot on the window, and every time the Dems run an ad they’re putting a blue dot on the window. If, on election day, there are more blue dots than red dots, the Democrats win.
If my friend’s metaphor is wrong, then this scurrilous anti-Obama email doesn’t matter. But if he’s right, maybe it does.
Which is why the Tax Foundation deserves kudos for taking the email apart point by point and showing that it’s full of lies.
RIGHT ON!
“
President Elect Obama: Stop the Tax Code Lie” echoes what I have been saying for years.In the post Chad explains, quite correctly, that (the highlights are mine) “a third of all taxpayers pay no income tax – projected to increase to 44% under President-Elect Obama’s plan {according to a report from the Tax Foundation – rdf
}. The reason for this disparity in what people believe and what is actually true dates back to the initial passing of the Earned Income Tax Credit in 1975, and its massive expansion in 1990 and 1993.Touted as one of the top anti-poverty programs in the country, the Earned Income Tax Credit is no more than a massive government welfare and wealth redistribution system – kept on the down-low from most Americans. It is not obvious because it isn’t called “welfare.” It is called a “tax refund.” I hate to tell Congress, but a refund is only a refund up to the amount that someone paid. Anything else, if NOT A REFUND, is welfare. Currently, taxpayers that paid no income tax (zero, zilch, nada) can receive a “refund” of up to $4,825. [Not a typo].
I am not here to argue whether these people need the money or whether or not the poor should be helped or anything related. My issue is simple. The government needs to stop lying to the American public by funneling these massive welfare payments through the tax code. If the welfare is needed, open up the debate on whether or not welfare is needed and stop hiding it in the tax code.
Also, the biggest area of tax fraud – by far – is related to the Earned Income Tax Credit. Approximately 1/3 of all returns containing an earned Income Tax Credit is flawed, resulting in billions of dollars in lost funds to the government (ultimately taxpayers). If someone wants these welfare payments, let them apply for welfare. Most of these people are already on food stamps and receive assistance already. Let the Department of Health & Human Services sort this out and let us actually see from a budgetary standpoint, the true cost of welfare in this country. What is the government hiding here?
President-Elect Obama has promised a vast expansion in refundable tax credits such as the earned income tax credit. Personally, I think it is time we stopped the lie. I am not against people who need help getting help, but I am against lying to Americans to get it done.”
Bordeaux points out that “this lie has been going on during the Ford Era, the Reagan Era, the Bush I Era, the Clinton Era, and the Bush II Era. Obama did not start the lie”.
As I said in my post “
Obama The Red Menace” (I was being facetious – and making a Broadway reference) –“I do not believe that the Tax Code should be used to ‘redistribute’ wealth or assist in providing ‘welfare’ to lower income individuals. The purpose of the federal income tax is to raise the money necessary to run the government – period. While the Code can encourage certain positive activities such as saving and investment, higher education, charitable contribution and volunteer work, home ownership, etc – all things that benefit society in general – it should not be used for ‘social engineering’.
I am also against the concept of ‘refundable’ tax credits – credits that allow an individual or family to ‘make a profit’ from filing a tax return. This includes the current Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit.
The EITC does not provide the safeguards, checks, and balances required in other federal and state welfare programs necessary for responsible fiscal management. As a result, it is perhaps the most abused provision of the tax code. Studies have suggested that close to 30% of all EITC claims are bogus.”
I also said – “I am not against tax relief for the working poor or the concept of providing aid to families with dependent children, or other types of welfare programs for the working poor”. I just don’t believe these concepts should not be incorporated into the Tax Code.
So what do you think?
TTFN