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JayhawkInMaine t1_jbe3xxz wrote

As an adult I’ve lived in FL, TX, MD, TN, GA, & now ME. I’m convinced that total taxes you pay are about the same if you’re a homeowner. A renter might see a difference in taxes paid, but not necessarily in expenses incurred.

My last location before ME was GA. In GA, no excise tax on vehicles & slightly different state income tax structure, but sales tax is 2.5% higher on all purchases. Also millage rate on property taxes is higher.

So the state’s still going to get their money.

FL, TN, & TX had no state income tax, but property & sales taxes made up for it.

MD had taxes on everything & everything was more expensive, so total out of pocket total was higher, but salaries were higher also.

Red state/Blue state/Purple state didn’t seem to matter to me. They’re all going to figure out how to get your money for their projects & blame the shortfall on someone else.

That’s just my experience anyway.

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nogzila t1_jbfbm0o wrote

I agree people always make a deal about the state tax but that state will get its money somehow. Certain houses in certain counties in New Hampshire was ridiculous when I was looking to buy there .

A 350 k house with 12 k yearly tax bill which would mean you could pay the house off and still owe 1000 bucks a month .

But hey no sales tax …

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BigNutzBlue t1_jbfphsn wrote

Exactly. His co workers must not own property. NH makes up for no income/sales tax by having high property taxes. It all washes out in the end no matter where you live.

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TranscendentPretzel t1_jbgayrb wrote

Property tax is worse, though because at least with income tax, you only pay tax on money you have. If you don't make any money, you don't pay taxes. With property tax, you have to keep paying even after your home is paid off, after retirement when you're on a fixed income, or if you lose your job and have no income, the state doesn't care. They will literally take your home that you spent your entire life paying off because you owe property taxes. If you can't tell, I have issues with property taxes. You never really own anything because of them. You're essentially renting from the state.

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SomeDudeUpHere t1_jbhbctb wrote

But in Maine, you still pay property tax. Depends on income level, but I pay way more in Maine income tax than the difference would be in property tax.

Edit: I don't understand the downvotes. My home in Maine vs being in NH might cost me like 2k less per year, but I pay way more in Maine income tax than 2 grand.

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Beasagdeux t1_jbu7zkz wrote

If you are paying 'way more' than $2K in Maine income taxes then you are making WAY MORE than most Mainer's ever will.... which is probably why you are being downvoted. Totally not fair.. but some people do start getting twitchy when 'rich' people bitch about paying income taxes.

But you aren't wrong. The reality is that the mill rate in NH is all over the place.. the same as the mill rates in Maine. In some towns it's $5 in others it's $30.

Everyone says 'oh NH property taxes are so much higher'... and back in the day.. they used to be. MUCH higher. But these days.. not so much.

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SomeDudeUpHere t1_jbun0kd wrote

You're right. Looked it over, and I don't pay way more than 2k. But it's basically a wash. Yeah, I used the 2k number based on towns in each state that I know roughly what the rates are, though you're right that some maine towns absolutely have higher rates than some NH towns

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Old_Cockroach_2993 t1_jbh5k52 wrote

Here in Jersey we would have that property tax bill and 7% sales tax. Well close to that, well I just looked ...9 10k ugh

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furrylandseal t1_jbe7etc wrote

100% that it mostly evens out because if something isn’t taxed, or is taxed lower, they make up the revenue somewhere else. That said, property taxes are local and can vary wildly depending upon where you live, esp in ME. If you live in a ME city or a town with public water/sewer, the property taxes are much higher than in a rural town on a home of equal value. And of course, property taxes are based on the value of a home, which a lot of people don’t get as they just look at the dollar amount of what they pay. My property taxes in MA are 5x higher than my property taxes in ME (no public water/sewer), but my house in MA is worth 3x more and the MA taxes pay for public water, sewer, trash removal/recycling (not covered in my ME property taxes), excellent town amenities and I’m in a top MA public school system, so I’m getting a lot of value for that tax money.

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tobascodagama t1_jbf8xti wrote

> I’m getting a lot of value for that tax money.

Yeah, this is something that people should be paying more attention to. It's not just about how much you're paying but whether the value you get out is worth what you're putting in.

Americans like to pretend we're all rugged individualists, but very few of us are actually living that kind of life. Not even the "Live Free or Die" guys mocking OP.

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furrylandseal t1_jbfh4uj wrote

Absolutely. I get a lot of value for my tax dollars. I like safe infrastructure. I like having well maintained parks, traffic lights, good schools, safe cars, safe school busses, public transportation options, libraries and well paid government employees who serve the community. Those things aren’t free, but it’s the price I pay for the standard of living that I want. And that standard of living, when supported by tax dollars, is maintained community-wide, which reduces such problems as poverty, which in turn reduces crime. It’s a pretty good deal.

People who grumble about high property taxes in good school systems also don’t seem to appreciate how much funding that school system increases their property values. Maybe they don’t have school age kids, so they think they’re not receiving any benefit, but if you dug up their house and planted it two towns over where they would pay lower taxes, their house is now worth $100k, $200k, maybe $1m less, just to save like $1k a year.

And don’t even get me started on the Live Free or Die/rugged individualist people who imagine themselves as some kind of cowboy living in the wild Wild West as they drive on roads funded by taxpayer dollars, eat meat inspected by safety inspectors, live and work in buildings and drive cars that comply with safety codes - every single thing they can do safely throughout their day is thanks to some kind of government regulation. Most of those people have never traveled to other countries that lack our kind of standards, maybe they’d appreciate what they have.

That said, I don’t think they are the majority or even close. I think most people like a government that guarantees a certain standard of living, infrastructure and safety for its citizens. The “Live Free” people who want to dismantle it are outliers and the government officials who actually vote to dismantle it do so only because they are bought and paid for by big business.

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FightTomorrow t1_jbfgkqh wrote

I’ve never been an angry shake-my-fist kind of idiot when it came to taxes. I live in a society and societies aren’t free. We all want to go tax-free and lean into subsistence’s homesteading? Great — until we’re invaded and are subject to authoritarian rule and now we have no dollars. Lol. Not a single American doesn’t benefit from tax-funded infrastructure, education and defense.

I just wish we’d better address the wasteful spending and maximize the punch my tax dollars make. There’s plenty of arguments that are legitimate when it comes to the bullshit that our money goes to.

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tokov t1_jbg2r13 wrote

The tricky part is that individuals often have wildly different lists of items they personally consider wasteful, when talking about waste at the city/county level. As an example, I've talked to folks that feel that locally funded bike paths and other expensive local park system amenities are a waste of their tax dollars.

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bfdTerp t1_jbe7v77 wrote

I generally agree with this statement. I have lived in MD, VA, WA, and ME. At the end of the day it mostly evens out. I have came to the conclusion that any place the majority of people see as a desirable place to live will cost you in taxes, cost of living, or salary (up or down).

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eljefino t1_jbh1av3 wrote

Yeah house prices suck up everything you've got after paying for your heating/ cooling, food, tax bill. Cost of living is a little higher in "paradise" than, say, Ohio.

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gregra193 t1_jbf7kpq wrote

Adding to Florida, a friend with a ~$280k home is paying $4000 for homeowners insurance alone. Flood is additional.

I think a similar home in Maine is $900-1200/year.

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UhaRugger1 t1_jbfggwa wrote

Our home in Florida has regular homeowners insurance, hurricane insurance, flood insurance, sink hole insurance (which I admittedly didn't renew this year), and a million dollar termite bond for formosan termites only. That's the most common type of termite in our area. If we were in northeastern, central or southern florida we would have to have other types of termite bonding. There are 3-4 types of termites in those areas that are prevalent.

Our regular homeowners with hurricane was $1400 when we first moved and now it's ~$3,000, I think closer to $3400 but I would have to double check. That doesn't include the flood, sink hole, or termite. We aren't in a flood zone but it has gone from $400 a year to $575 since it's based on housing value. Our termite is just under $400 a year, which we get a couple discounts on to get it to that number. Sinkhole used to be $400 per year and now is $500 but I didn't renew that this year due to sink holes not being prevalent in our area.

Our house is also now over 6 years old. I'm fully expecting a letter about them not covering our roof fully if there is damage going forward. Many companies have gone to a percentage of the roof based on age. We have a florida only insurance. USAA was 3x more expensive when we initially looked into insurances. Most of the nationwide insurances are much more expensive as well.

I can't wait to get out of this state. It's so expensive, there are no good services in our area, our tax dollars don't go far here due to extreme corruption, they cater to tourists mostly, and it's hot as hell.

Edit: our home is a 4/2/2, 2098 sqft that we bought for $252,700 in 2016. Our same house layout on a 1/10 of an acre, sold for $500k recently. It's absurd.

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Skjeggape t1_jbeoqr9 wrote

>https://smartasset.com/retirement/retirement-taxes

I spent some time once trying to find state SPENDING numbers, and although it ends up getting skewed because of states that in general are net contributors vs net beneficiaries of Federal dollars + military spending + deficit spending, over time, net revenue from taxes and spending will need to balance out. I basically took this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets#cite_note-26 and tried to reason about it.

My guess is that state differ in how they treat local taxes & services vs state provided ones, as well as some states that have large 'external' income streams such as oil/timber/resources/tourism/federal spend, like Alaska & Hawaii, but have relative low populations end up spending more pr. capita.

The ~$1500/pr capita spend for Maine vs New Hampshire could all be state tax revenues from lobster rolls at Red's + federally subsidized BIW salaries, for example.

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UhaRugger1 t1_jbfejqi wrote

This seems pretty on point. I have a friend who is in finance and did the math when they were moving from West Hartford CT to a cheap part of New Hampshire. There was only an $8,000 a year difference. They still wanted to live on west Hartford but their spouse wanted to live on NH. If they had moved to a more expensive part of NH, it probably would have been about the same. They had a lot less services where they moved in NH and NH likes to fee you to death.

Edit: it's like florida. We pay more to live in florida than we did to live in Fairfield county part of CT. Florida will fee you to death, property taxes go up every year because they add assessments last minute, then you have all the different insurances needed to have a house. It's crazy how much insurance and the types of insurances required.

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maturin-aubrey t1_jbhd7yo wrote

I agree. I’ve lived in me, ny, nj, co, and ca, despite the differences in taxes, no one place seemed any more or less expensive when you consider income, etc.

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DayShiftDave t1_jbgjvdf wrote

Yup, it all comes out in the wash while you're still earning a paycheck. Where some states have major advantages in taxes is when you retire and are no longer paying income tax.

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asperges_me_domine t1_jbgyk7z wrote

Yeah, I have lived and paid taxes in PA, NJ, and IL. Maine has been the lightest tax state I've ever lived in as an adult, and that's before you consider property. To put that in perspective, my folks in NJ pay monthly for 0.5 acres what I pay annually for 14.

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