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8-2-07 Editorial 'Reliance on property taxes must be fixed'
Reliance on property taxes must be fixed Haddon Heights' woes are another sign of a flawed tax system that Trenton must overhaul. With borough residents facing a Wednesday deadline for paying their onerous third-quarter tax bills, the Haddon Heights borough council was right to extend the payment deadline to Aug. 31. A property revaluation in the borough last year has many residents facing huge property-tax increases -- 30 percent and 40 percent for some. Worse, many residents didn't realize their taxes were set to shoot up like this until after it was too late to contest the reassessed value of their property. The borough is now trying to get the reassessment repealed, but the mayor and council don't have that power. So, in the meantime, the borough is right to give residents struggling to come up with hundreds of extra dollars more time to pay their taxes. The mess in Haddon Heights is just another clear sign of how broken New Jersey's tax system is. Schools and local governments lean far too heavily for funding on property taxes, as opposed to other tax revenues. The result of that is annual increases in the tax rates coupled with huge increases every few years for homeowners whose property is reassessed at a higher value. That's what has happened to hundreds of Haddon Heights households, where a revaluation hadn't been done in 10 years. The problem with leaning so heavily on property taxes is that it's particularly stifling to certain groups of property owners. Retirees who are on fixed incomes that don't increase by much, if anything, year to year, can't keep up with property taxes going up 7 percent or more each year. Likewise, young teachers, police officers and other middle-class workers who aren't yet earning high salaries are blocked from buying houses they should be able to afford. Or, they struggle to keep up with mortgages and tax payments that increase faster than their salaries. New Jersey has the highest average property taxes in the nation at more than $6,300 a year per homeowner. In Haddon Heights, there are plenty of residents now wishing they could simply get their annual taxes down to that amount. Our elected officials in Trenton -- Gov. Jon Corzine and legislators -- have to make fixing the school-funding formula their top priority. If they don't, this state's oppressive property taxes will continue to drive people away from New Jersey. What's happening in Haddon Heights will continue to happen in other communities across the state.
Reliance on property taxes must be fixed Haddon Heights' woes are another sign of a flawed tax system that Trenton must overhaul. With borough residents facing a Wednesday deadline for paying their onerous third-quarter tax bills, the Haddon Heights borough council was right to extend the payment deadline to Aug. 31. A property revaluation in the borough last year has many residents facing huge property-tax increases -- 30 percent and 40 percent for some. Worse, many residents didn't realize their taxes were set to shoot up like this until after it was too late to contest the reassessed value of their property. The borough is now trying to get the reassessment repealed, but the mayor and council don't have that power. So, in the meantime, the borough is right to give residents struggling to come up with hundreds of extra dollars more time to pay their taxes. The mess in Haddon Heights is just another clear sign of how broken New Jersey's tax system is. Schools and local governments lean far too heavily for funding on property taxes, as opposed to other tax revenues. The result of that is annual increases in the tax rates coupled with huge increases every few years for homeowners whose property is reassessed at a higher value. That's what has happened to hundreds of Haddon Heights households, where a revaluation hadn't been done in 10 years. The problem with leaning so heavily on property taxes is that it's particularly stifling to certain groups of property owners. Retirees who are on fixed incomes that don't increase by much, if anything, year to year, can't keep up with property taxes going up 7 percent or more each year. Likewise, young teachers, police officers and other middle-class workers who aren't yet earning high salaries are blocked from buying houses they should be able to afford. Or, they struggle to keep up with mortgages and tax payments that increase faster than their salaries. New Jersey has the highest average property taxes in the nation at more than $6,300 a year per homeowner. In Haddon Heights, there are plenty of residents now wishing they could simply get their annual taxes down to that amount. Our elected officials in Trenton -- Gov. Jon Corzine and legislators -- have to make fixing the school-funding formula their top priority. If they don't, this state's oppressive property taxes will continue to drive people away from New Jersey. What's happening in Haddon Heights will continue to happen in other communities across the state.
