re: #622 realwest

Ah well, finally something I think I can speak authoritatively about!
In most place, real estate evaluation for real property taxes bears no resemblance at all to the real VALUE of the property.
For example, in NYC, homes are assessed (the real estate tax evaluation) currently at about 25% or so of Market Value. That’s so the politicians can say “We’re not going to raise your real estate taxes” meaning the percentage of tax won’t go up. But they’ll increase the assessed valuation so you do pay more in real property taxes and the politicians haven’t really lied: the amount of tax per assessed valuation stays the same, it’s just that the assessed valuation goes up, as does your tax bill!

Another fun fact about property taxes is that in many jurisdictions, they set the mill levy rate after they decide how much money they need for the budget, in order to bring in the desired amount of revenue. Exactly the opposite of how the states do their budgets, where they decide how much to spend after seeing how much money they expect to collect in taxes.

Except for California, of course, where there’s no connection between revenue and expenditures. Not sure who thought it was a good idea to allow a state to do deficit spending…