Yes it's illegal to raise it more than 2% per year. When a property is sold, it's reassessed and the new owner's taxes can go up a whole lot.
To "fix" this problem of property tax shortfall, we have extra bonds that are placed on the new properties being sold in special assessment districts.
I know people who are paying $500 per year but they've owned their houses for 30 years and the assessed values are around 50K or so. Their neighbors who have bought their houses as resales are paying somewhere around $4000 per year. Luckily for them, they aren't subject to the additional bonds that came around post. Prop. 13 (circa 1978. Not sure exactly when the special assessment districts were set up, but it was sometime in the early 80's I think).
The bonds add significantly to taxes. People in our neighborhood pay around $14,000 per year and we've owned our houses for 4 years. (Imagine this........ they'd be nearly $25,000 if the houses were being sold now!..... I'm sure I should be happy I'm "saving" $11,000 per year having bought 4 years ago in prop. taxes alone but somehow I just don't look at it that way).
Then the PUBLIC schools here have decided that since they cannot pass bonds for more taxes (gee......... I wonder why?) that they should just charge each child a "fee" for each class to cover materials (sheet music, piano accompaniest, science materials, xeroxing, coaches, or whatever else they throw in for good measure) to the tune of about $125 per class PLUS mandatory books. Now you add that up per child and four or five classes and throw in a sport and you're thinking....... exactly where is my $14,000 going?
That is why Californians refuse to pass higher taxes and I think that they require a 2/3 vote to pass them anyway.
I doubt prop 13 will ever be repealed because those who would REALLY hurt are the old folks who have owned their homes for a very long time. Eventually they'll be reassessed though when they're sold.
Hey I heard on the news that California has settled with Msft for a billion bucks. Hope it didn't cost us that much to sue them.
TA |
