Real Estate Taxes and Assessed Valuation -- When assessed valuation increases and your taxes go up despite not

having made any improvements or sold your home or derived any income from it, isn't that an unrealized increase in capital gains? Why should your taxes increase? If your taxes keep increasing via multiplier increases, assessed valuation increases doesn't that penalize people who stay in their homes for 5,10,or 20 years? Is this fair? Homes are not truly an investment until they are sold and paid off. Until then, the bank owns them and the citizens are paying for the privilege of keeping it up for the tax assessors and the banks or mortgage companies. Wouldn't it be more fair to tax our homes at the purchase price plus any improvement costs until any profits are realized? Other investments are taxed on realized gains and losses. We can't deduct any home improvements or upkeep from our taxes so how can our homes be considered an investment? With real estate taxes increasing annually, it helps increase the rate of mortgage defaults and hurts citizens who live in their homes.

Public Comments

1. Your taxes increase because you are being taxed on the value of your home on an annual basis. Thus, when the value goes up the tax goes up through reassessment. Is it fair? It is the system that we have and until we do something to reform property taxes it is the system that we will keep.
2. Property taxes go up in direct proportion to the value of your home so if you were to sell tomorrow you know the price of the house has appreciated. I know the system is wrong and I agree with you on the rest of the matter but that's the law and like the old saying goes, When in Rome do as the Romans do. Good luck.
3. There's no such thing as "fair" taxes -- everyone involved will have a different opinion about any change to tax policy. When homes are reassessed, the idea is to "level-set" all the property values in a particular community to reasonably recent sale values. If the average property value had doubled since the last assessment, then the tax *rate* (which is multiplied by the value of each home to determine the tax due) will probably be cut in half, keeping the taxes due the same. The idea is to spread the costs of the services being paid for by these taxes amongst the homeowners, weighted by the value of the home. It's a progressive tax -- people who are worth more typically own larger homes and pay more in property taxes. Someone who bought a 3000 sq ft home in 1980 for $200,000 shouldn't pay less in taxes than someone who bought a similar home in 2007 for $450,000 -- the value of their home, unrealized or not, is the same.