Taxes

Sometimes I have to wonder why people buy a house and move here. Yes, the prices are affordable but do they ever take into consideration the taxes they will have to pay? While glancing through The Neighborhood News just a short while ago I was curious about a couple of properties located in different sections of the city and purchased for around the same amount of money.

We have always known that our tax base was high in Lake Worth. What is ridiculous is our property tax here and the disparity. Just where I live, we have some people who pay little or no taxes and we have others paying over $1,300 a year for a small condo whose value is half of what it was two years ago.

The problem lies in the assessment of its worth. The house at 302 Fordham was assessed at $363,404 and had no homestead exemption and sold for $225,000. The owner paid $8,231 in taxes. Will his property get re-assessed for taxes for 2009? Hope at least he can homestead it.

The house at 1312 Cochran was assessed at $204,000 with a $50,000 homestead exemption and paid $3,942 in property taxes. The property was assessed at $206,000. This guy is in much better shape.

The house at 921 N Lakeside was assessed at $262,840 with no homestead and paid $6,083 in taxes in 2008. It sold for $200,000 in May. Will this property get a break from the tax assessor's office for 2009?

There is something fundamentally wrong about this as well as many disparities in LW. Is it fair to pay taxes on a value higher than what you paid for the property? Is it fair to pay on highest and best use? The fair thing would be to assess on what the owner actually paid for the house, and then raise or lower the tax value each year based on some factor that would be fair not what the property assessor says it is worth because we know it is worth what a buyer is willing to pay.

Our tax rate in Lake Worth is at 7.65 mils up from the year before at 7.29. With the Fire now off to the County, who knows what Mark Bates and the City will come up with. Lantana had a millage of 3.23 and Greenacres was at 4.70 for 2008. Neither one of these cities has its own Utility and Greenacres has its own Fire and Police I believe.

Palm Beach County has now proposed a 15% increase to the rollback rate. Our property taxes are too high and everything else we pay in taxes are too high as well. Raising taxes at this time is not a good move.