As anyone paying attention knows NJ pays the highest property taxes in the nation. Politics here centers around various politicians lying (except Daggett) about how they will lower property taxes. Nj residents apparently live in a dream world where they think that property taxes are going to drop precipitously by electing a new (or old) governor and it will happen in 4 years. It's truly amusing to hear people in NJ talk about this. One of the biggest mantras, usually trotted out by Republicans is that corruption in NJ is apparently THE cause of the high property taxes. So lets look at this charge.
A quick Google search brought up a page that states the current population of NJ is 8,862,661.
According to a Rutgers article corruption in NJ is a hidden tax on NJ residents that costs them $1 billion each year. Doing simple math, 1,000,000,000/8,862,661 we find that per person that "tax" costs $115.77.
Lets assume that half the population owns homes/property. They don't and I don't know the actual numbers. That corruption tax would be double the $115.77 to $231.54. Monthly that would be 9 bucks.
9 bucks.
Honestly, If that is enough to break someone then I submit that their economic situation is far more problematic than that which would be solved by eliminating this so called "corruption tax." New Jersey residents blow this kind of money on entertainment a week.
I saw a post in the comments section on the NY Times website where an assumed ex-resident of NJ where they claimed a "friend" was paying 19,000+ a quarter in taxes and was glad to have left for Nevada or Florida. First I thought of how given the small amount that corruption "costs" the tax payer that it's elimination particularly on this 19,000+ quarterly bill would not even register much less provide incentive to stay in NJ. The other thing that came to mind was that apparently this person has enough income to pay $80,000 per year in property taxes. Think about that. This person allegedly pays more in property taxes than the median yearly salary of a resident of Essex County. What exactly is this person's problem. The municipality with the highest property tax rate in NJ is Ridgefield Park Village at 2.255% which means that this person's property is worth $3.54 million.
$3.54 million.
Seriously folks in multimillion dollar homes are complaining about property taxes? Can we say: selfish prick?
So really why are property taxes high in NJ? Well a couple of things come to mind:
1) The rich simply are not paying their equitable share. Equitable meaning they can afford to put in more but are protected by various officials (some not elected) to keep from paying what they can afford.
2) NJ does not have a Wall Street that brings in a lot of money but it houses a lot of people who make money in it. It's like the rappers from NY who make it big and move to Englewood, Alpine, Englewood Cliffs, Teaneck, etc. All that business tax is collected by NY but NJ only gets the property and income taxes.
3) NJ has the lowest sales tax in the tri-state area (as far as I can tell). NY taxes everything including clothes and food. NJ does not. Lost revenue. On top of that while NY charges 8.5% (or more), NJ has 7% raised by Corzine last year I believe in order to close the budget.
4) It's largest city, Newark is underemployed. The inattention paid to the residents to Newark in terms of education and employment, costs the state millions in uncollected income tax, unrealized property taxes from depressed property values, high social services costs and of course the costs to jail and police those persons whom neglect turns out.
These are the top reasons why property taxes are so high in NJ. And until the electorate get it, they will continue to be fooled by politicians promising things they simply cannot deliver on and who'll be long gone to bigger and better money making things by the time the population gets a clue.
(17 years of informed commentary)