1 ganewsweather FARRELL
Cars travel on Rt. 9W in Alpine as a sign welcomes them to snowy New Jersey. (Tim Farrell | The Star-Ledger)
TRENTON-- New Jersey's average property tax bill rose to $8,549 in 2016, and the highest property taxes in the U.S. got higher.
Tiny Tavistock borough in Camden County tops ourlistof municipalities across the state with an average property tax bill of $31,128. Of course, the borough's population is in the single digits.
But next on the list is Millburn, with a$23,327 average tax bill. Loch Arbour ($22,323), Alpine ($20,910), Tenafy ($19,866), Mountain Lakes ($19,775), Rumson ($19,146), Glen Ridge ($19,045), Mendham ($18,752), and Essex Fells ($18,743) round out the top 10.
New Jersey residents love to vent their frustrationswith sky-high property tax bills. Here are some of your comments:
john:If you have don't have kids, MOVE ASAP.
mrdenis: You never "own" a home in NJ ... you just rent from the state and they charge whatever they need to continue their corruption.
Archduke F: Looking at average property tax bills is useless. The property values in many of these towns are very high, in addition most of these towns have top schools and other amenities. To understand property tax burdens, you need to look at home values, average homeowner incomes, quality of schools and other city amenities. When you take all of that into consideration, you'll find that property tax burdens are highest in poor areas like Paterson and Irvington, and modest in very wealthy towns.
(For the record, we have alsocompared where property taxes are the largestand smallestshare of income.)
Reasonable:The cost of funding the government increase faster than the income of the vast majority of people. Unless that government cost actually decreases (let alone remains flat) the future looks dismal for RE ( home ownership) for a huge chunk of the middle class.
Tony Novak: It depends on how you look at it. If you look at the property tax as a percentage of the property's market value then we pay a much higher rate in Downe Township, Cumberland County than any of these in the list. My home at Money Island now has a tax rate more than 4% of market value. Compare that to Tavistock, for example, that pays less than 2% for a much higher level of service that includes police, trash, library, etc. that we do not have here. We are among the poorest communities in the state but have the highest effective property tax rate as far as I can tell.
Jimmytown: You only have to pay these taxes on average for 12 years per kid since many of the residents sell as soon as their kid graduates HS.
H.L.Mencken: Although informative, this article doesn't tell the full story. Property taxes in NJ are among the worst in the nation. We need to change how schools and municipalities gain revenue and spend in order to bring this under control! How we pay for public education is another issue that needs to be addressed. We should not be solely dependent on property taxes to pay for it!
Deletebutton@sl: A nice "another reason why I got to leave" article to go with the morning coffee.
EmperorBill:The real problem is the current State 1947 Constitution of Home Rule. This needs to be eliminated by a new State Constitution. Then schools can be consolidated by County. 565 plus Superintendents can be eliminated, police forces can be consolidated by County, Fire Districts can be consolidated by County, Health Departments can be consolidated by County, Human Resource Departments can be consolidated by County and local governments can get back to doing what is necessary at the local level. People always throw in southern states to show lower taxes, however they are structured differently and mostly are run by Parish, in otherwords like Counties should be up North and that is consolidated. Your Legislators will tell you there is limited savings. They are wrong. The savings comes in administration. Just ask yourself this question - why do we need more school superintendents then we have municipalities?
Samantha Marcus may be reached atsmarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter@samanthamarcus. FindNJ.com Politics on Facebook.
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