Wednesday, November 20, 2013

New Jersey's Burden

One of the distinctions of our state that most people in New Jersey would rather forget is our legendarily high property taxes. A new study from the Tax Policy Center confirms what we all fear: The highest average property tax burden as a share of home prices belongs to New Jersey, at 2.0 percent. We're followed in that distinction by Texas and New Hampshire, each at 1.9 percent.

New Jersey also ranks among the highest property taxes at the county level. The study found only nine counties in the entire nation with average property tax burdens above $8,000 per year, and six of them are in New Jersey: Bergen, Essex, Hunterdon, Morris, Passaic and Somerset. The other three are in New York.

Where can you go to escape these property taxes? The U.S. county with the lowest property tax burden as a percentage of home values is Maui County in Hawaii, at just 0.2 percent. That sounds like a pretty nice place to live.

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