[Amps] FW: economics 3501

[Gudguyham at aol.com]

In a message dated 7/29/2007 8:20:29 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
dhallam at rapidsys.com writes:

As an  aside on taxes, there is an "interesting" situation
developing here in  Florida over property taxes.  Property is assessed at the
sale  price.  Once the value is set, taxes cannot rise more than 3% per  year
as long as you live in the house.  If the property changes hands,  the
assessed value becomes the new sales price. 
 
Hey come on, this happened to me 21 years ago in Connecticut.  When I  bought 
my house in the early 80's the real estate agent told me what the taxes  were 
on the house and property.  Typically they would put that figure right  on 
the house real estate listing.  After all, people need to budget, and  know what 
their taxes are going to be.  Well, shortly before I bought the  house our 
town hired a NEW tax assessor.  Well the house had been owned by  the previous 
owner for some time, I come along and pay a lot more than he did  some years 
back.  Ok, no problem, but after I bought the house, the  tax assessor sent me a 
whole new tax bill based on the sale price of the  house. I complained, but 
he showed me right in the laws where he had the  "power" to do that.  The 
previous assessor was a "nice guy" and he didn't  do that.  He let the house get 
re-assessed  when the whole town got  its assessment upgrade every 7 years.  SO 
new buyers got a free ride for a  few years anyway.  If you investigate this I 
am sure you will probably find  they have been able to do this already.  Lou



************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at 
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour