On Tuesday evenings I volunteer with my 17 year old son at Scottsdale Healthcare on Osborn.
Another volunteer, originally from Texas, and I were chatting last week about the crazy high property taxes in Texas. Sure Texas doesn’t have an income tax but if you’re retired and without a lot of income you could be better off living in Arizona with our much lower property taxes.
My volunteer friend was excited to tell me this “Its a small world” story tonight. His brother in Texas had just called and said he had agreed to take an early retirement and was now considering moving to Arizona because of our low property taxes.
Texas will never compete with Arizona as a retirement area with those crazy high property taxes.
1 response so far ↓
1 Elsie Higdon // Jun 22, 2007 at 6:18 am
Get all the facts.
If you just want to compare property tax rates perhaps the rate per square foot of living space would be a more reasonable comparison, and the rate of return on the money you had left to invest after buying in an area with lower housing cost.
The cost of living in an area is much more complicated than just comparing “property tax rates”.
I live in Texas.
Here are some Texas Tax facts.
• Texas is in the midst of a two stage process to lower the school portion of the property taxes. The first phase lowered the rates for 2006, and when the rates are published in the fall there will be an additional reduction. • Current property owners over 65 did not see reap the benefits of last years adjustment to the school tax rates, so legislation has been passed that will give them some tax relief. • If you are 65 or older in the state of Texas there is a tax ceiling put on the school tax rates, by the way this is the lions share of our property taxes ($14.70 per $1000.00 of my $18.70 2006 tax rate,) • Let’s say you are 70, and decide you want to downsize to a smaller home…and the tax ceiling on your existing home leaves you paying 70% of the current school taxes, you can transfer that ceiling to your new home. Even if you move to a different school district, you will only pay the percentage of the school tax rate you were paying before. • The Texas property tax code allows for a partial exemption for a homestead, if you are disabled and an additional exemption for disabled veterans.
By the way, The Tax Foundation’s latest figures on local and state tax burden rank Texas as the 43rd lowest with a local and state tax burden of 9.3%, and Arizona as the 31st lowest with a 10.3% local and state tax burden.
If you are looking for a low tax burden perhaps Alaska, it is ranked as 50th lowest local and state tax burden at 6.6%…..somehow I think Alaska is more suited to young adventuresome people, and not retirees.
This is a great link for tax information if you want to look at the whole picture.
http://taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/336.html
All I know is somehow, someway, we all have to pay the piper. Taxes are a cost of civilization
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