Category: taxes

Eight Steps To Lowering Your Property Tax Bill.

Those of you who own property know that sometimes the property tax bill shows up and it is not pretty. Property taxes keep on rising, even while the housing economy slides deeper into a slump. What gives and what can you do about it? Money Magazine has 7 ways that you can lower your property tax bill, and I will add my 8th to the bottom of the list, which is possibly the most important!

1. Learn your system – Taxing authorities use different methods to calculate home values, so learn what they are doing in your area.

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Your Tax Dollars At Work – More Pork, Less Bridges.

Flipping through Sunday’s newspaper I came across a little blurb about how some of our tax dollars are being spent. While there had been some big talk lately in Congress about stopping the funding of “pork” projects in order to fix our nation’s infrastructure due to the bridge collapse in Minneapolis in August, an amendment introduced to do just that was rejected by the Senate by a vote of 82-14. Seems they don’t want to give up their little pet projects in order to fix our roads and bridges, but would rather spend $2.5 billion on some gems like the following:

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Money Mistake Monday – I Didn’t Have Enough Taxes Taken Out Syndrome.

I have talked before of our move to the beach a few years ago and how we made it work for us. Sure, our rent almost tripled by moving here, but somehow we were able to make ends meet. It made me wonder where all the money was going before! But anyway, one of the ways we got some extra money every week was to reduce the amount of money withheld from my paycheck – so when I did this, my paycheck went up about $300 every other week – or $600 a month. That helped a lot! Of course, it was a big mistake that later came back to bite us when taxes were due, as I did not have enough withheld to cover my tax burden for the year – so I owed a couple thousand dollars come April 15th. Not good.

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