How much did your property tax increase?

Bucky, I’m all ears if you have some magical solution that solves everything and completely reforms the tax code.

If we went with your approach of one should pay for taxes on the value they bought their house, I can see a great number of issues and potential loopholes with this approach. For example, I could “buy” my parents house for $1. Since that is what I paid for it, that’s technically the value (in your approach), and I’d essentially pay nothing in property taxes.

Unless we completely revamp the entire tax code, counties/cities/schools still need to get funded from the people who live there. I don’t have kids but have no problem paying extra taxes for school levies, paying the county to make, maintain and plow roads, etc. I really enjoy living in a city that invests in parks, playgrounds, hiking/biking trails and other amenities for our citizens. I wouldn’t have to live in a city that had no public amenities. I also understand the relationship in that the better the schools/parks/streets/cities are, the more attractive my real estate is and thus, the more it appreciates in value.

I think everyone understands your perspective and displeasures with the taxing authority, but complaining without a reasonable solution in mind isn’t getting you anywhere.

buckybadger wrote:

Why should what a corporate farm on the opposite end of the county or township pays for a piece of land somehow impact the “valuation” of my property? That’s not a comparison for these magical “valuations.” They are buying completely different land for a different purpose, with funds gathered in a completely different way.

thats how comps work man. have you ever bought a house and looked at the comps in the area the bank uses when assessing your loan to value? nothing is going to be an exact match to what you are comparing to. So they have to take whatever data points they have and extrapolate the best they can.

Randy Wieland wrote:

There are ~17,300 parcels of property in Wabasha County of all different shapes and sizes.

Would be interesting to see how many residential properties, commercial properties, recreational, and ag use acres that equates to. Take the equation away of house value and pay flat rate on the land.

Quick google search says that Waubasha County is 523 square miles of land. 27,878,400 x 523 = 14,580,403,200.- thats about $0.001166 per sqft of land for tax

Alright, so by this plan or logic this is the tax responsibility.

A 1 acre property would owe $50.80
A 40 acre property would owe $2,031
a 200 acre property would owe $10,158
so and so forth.

By this logic we want our owners agricultural, and wild spaces to carry the bulk of the tax burden. Even though 1-4 people live on this acreage and use the same infastructure as the person(S) living on 1 Acre property, or in a city lot, of smaller size. I see the fairness here… and I don’t also.

How would we tax a 3 acre apartment complex? Just $150 bucks? Rent should be dirt cheap right?

I fear this would result in the fragmentation of our ag lands and wild lands and further speed up sprawl.

I like something that is “more flat” than a progressive tax on property.

Wabasha County has 17,200 parcels.

Of those about 12,500 are either residential or commercial. The remainder are listed as “other” meaning some likely pay a property tax and some of that number are tax free.

If you charged a flat $1300 to every commercial or residential parcel in the county without touching the “other” category, you’d cover the annual budget. You could have a multiplier if the parcel was more than a 2 family structure, or generated more than X dollars in revenue to help lower that initial figure to closer to $1000 per parcel and still cover the budget.

If my property taxes were now $2000 for 2 parcels instead of the $7900 they are, there’s also a good chance some of that money would end up being spent back into the local economy as well. Win-win

It does not cost my county 3 or 4x that of some other homeowners in the county to provide services to me. I’d argue the opposite is true. Spread it out in a slightly more “fair” model.

Anyfish2 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Randy Wieland wrote:</div>
There are ~17,300 parcels of property in Wabasha County of all different shapes and sizes.

Would be interesting to see how many residential properties, commercial properties, recreational, and ag use acres that equates to. Take the equation away of house value and pay flat rate on the land.

Quick google search says that Waubasha County is 523 square miles of land. 27,878,400 x 523 = 14,580,403,200.- thats about $0.001166 per sqft of land for tax

Alright, so by this plan or logic this is the tax responsibility.

A 1 acre property would owe $50.80
A 40 acre property would owe $2,031
a 200 acre property would owe $10,158
so and so forth.

By this logic we want our owners agricultural, and wild spaces to carry the bulk of the tax burden. Even though 1-4 people live on this acreage and use the same infastructure as the person(S) living on 1 Acre property, or in a city lot, of smaller size. I see the fairness here… and I don’t also.

How would we tax a 3 acre apartment complex? Just $150 bucks? Rent should be dirt cheap right?

I fear this would result in the fragmentation of our ag lands and wild lands and further speed up sprawl.

That is not the complete logic. That is why I was inquiring to how much comercial , recreation, residental, ag,…and so on. Clearly there needs to be rates applied that would vary by use / needs AND MINIMAL standards.

I just think we need to get away from assessing what is ON the land. Why should a family own 3 consecutive lots in a city and utilize all of. But pays average to his neighbors for 1 lot and nearly nothing for the other two. Yet they own one of the more luxurious “lots” in town?? My point is get away from the value of the house and pay for the ground you occupy

A guy that can afford a 150000 house doesn’t need to go to the county and apply for a variance for his new impermeable 1 mile driveway because he cant afford it, and doesn’t have a slough that needs to be inspected by a wetland inspector to make sure that a local commercial or industrial business isn’t dumping chemicals into it. I’m all for equality but saying just because you have more acres doesn’t make you different is just plain wrong. I guarantee the rate that a large property owner visits the county for some request is far greater than a small property owner by multiples.

Riverrat wrote:

A guy that can afford a 150000 house doesn’t need to go to the county and apply for a variance for his new impermeable 1 mile driveway because he cant afford it, and doesn’t have a slough that needs to be inspected by a wetland inspector to make sure that a local commercial or industrial business isn’t dumping chemicals into it. I’m all for equality but saying just because you have more acres doesn’t make you different is just plain wrong. I guarantee the rate that a large property owner visits the county for some request is far greater than a small property owner by multiples.

I disagree.

Most of the landowners around us who own acreage don’t step foot in a county building or office until the exact day their property tax check is due. They aren’t the people asking for financial assistance, public transportation, using the court system, frequently interacting with police, or altering their land. It’s more often than not a demographic of people who just want to be left alone. Unfortunately these people are the easiest to take money from when there isn’t a flatter property tax system.

BigWerm wrote:

C’mon Grouse, you know that’s not what the problem is. Most people on both sides of the aisle are ok with spending on “us”, the problem is the fraud, corruption and inefficiencies before it reaches “us”. It’s $250M+ Feeding our Future fraud, a blank checkbook ($8B, still TBD years and counting) for Southwest Light rail, $100M+ Child Care Assistance Program Fraud, $18.5M for a Loon Center, $10k for a Dungeons & Dragons podcast, it’s $16M annually for 173 DEI positions in the Walz administration, it’s all the misappropriated COVID funds, it’s a $7.2M Goose Creek rest stop, it’s $1M+ DEI positions in just my local school district alone while 1/3rd of students can’t read/write at grade level and all the teachers say they need more student facing staff, or spending $18B surplus on “us” that has us headed for a $5B deficit. And these are just the one’s recently in MN. You just start adding 0’s to the frequency and severity once you get to the Federal Level.

Of course, we’d all like to be able to direct our tax dollars to support just the things we agree with. The problem is that there is absolutely nothing that 100% of the population agrees with when it comes to spending taxpayer money. We don’t have a democracy, we have a representative democracy for that very reason.

I think it’s easy to think that a lot of spending is “common sense” and that everybody would agree to fund these common sense priorities. You know, like boat ramps and walleye stocking, and ATV trails, and…

Believe it or not, there is a group that believes boat ramps are 100% a waste of taxpayer money and they have petitioned the DNR to stop wasting taxpayer money to “fund and facilitate recreation for the rich”. They say wealthy boat owners should “pay their own way” and stop bilking the taxpayer to subsidize their misplaced priorities.

Basically, they say the same thing about boat ramps that I say about bus lanes.

Nobody’s defending fraud or misappropriation, but the problem is getting ANY agreement at all on what government should do.

Randy Wieland wrote:

I just think we need to get away from assessing what is ON the land. Why should a family own 3 consecutive lots in a city and utilize all of. But pays average to his neighbors for 1 lot and nearly nothing for the other two. Yet they own one of the more luxurious “lots” in town?? My point is get away from the value of the house and pay for the ground you occupy

I’m not sure what county you are in but I’m in St Louis county and the land and buildings are assessed separately. It doesn’t show the breakout between land and property on my statement I get in the mail, but if I go on the county’s tax assessor website and look at my property detail report, you can see what hte land is valued vs the building. I’d have to assume most counties follow this methodology but I can’t say for certain.

I disagree with the statement people in the country don’t use services as much. Have neighbor farm in ” Wabasha county” who is always in court and uses government money plenty. Also they have long roads that go to 4 houses that need alot of maintaince and plowing compared to town. Heavy trucks causing road wear.
I bought a house in the country but still technically city limits. My taxes would be 40% less if I was 100 yards farther out of town and out of city limits. Does that suck,Yes. Did I know this before buying, yes. So how much can I complain. I knew what I was getting into.

I called our county’s assessor (Hennepin Co.) a few years ago to try to find out why my taxes had increased so much. This was when covid was ramping down. The assessor told me that the VALUE of my property, which includes a house, a detached three car garage and a garden shed, among other factors (+ or -) are based on what comparables in my area are selling for. Other factors may be improvements and condition.

He went on to explain that TAXES are set by politicians and bureaucrats by setting the mil rate levy according to expenses and proposed spending. The mil rate levied is subject to public scrutiny and votes at the next election.

I was at my cabin last summer (St Louis Co.) When the assessor came to my property. She reiterated what the Hennepin Co. assessor had told me. While she took notes of improvements that I had made, she also quizzed me on any condition issues which may lower, or at least limit the amount of any increase in value.

The percent of taxes to the value of both properties are similar.

Mine went down 4%, tmv up about 5% in Detroit Lakes. our rural/ag land jumped a good bit tho..

In the past 5 years since buying our house they have gone from $4000 to it’s looking like $8000+ after the moronic $100+million school referendum passed this year. We still haven’t gotten final numbers on that.

Rochester has become completely unaffordable to live in anymore and cannot wait to get the hell out.

munchy wrote:

In the past 5 years since buying our house they have gone from $4000 to it’s looking like $8000+ after the moronic $100+million school referendum passed this year. We still haven’t gotten final numbers on that.

Rochester has become completely unaffordable to live in anymore and cannot wait to get the hell out.

That is Scary & Sad Munchy. I don’t think most people understand that for every action – there is a reaction anymore!!

In Wisconsin anything zoned/classified residential is crazy high assessment and taxes are high.
Tillable ag land is assessed low so taxes are low.
Rec land falls in between.

Here in good ol Saint Paul, according to our proposed 2025 tax statement we have an increase of 3.77% or less than $200 total.

The estimated market value came down about 1.8%

Ramsey county’s levy increased 4.74% and our school district levy increased almost 8% but our homestead exclusion more than doubled which kept things reasonable for our family.

Our homeowners insurance on the other hand saw a 27% increase despite 18 years of home ownership without a single claim.