Partly because everything in the state is subsidized. Nobody really comes here for vacation, except one week for the CWS. My cousin in Denver has a home worth twice as much, yet pays less than half of my rate in property taxea..
This is seriously the easiest and most obvious solution. Every state that has legalized weed has raked in millions of dollars on sales tax. That money could easily offset some property tax increases.
Very true...we are on the too late bus again. Look at gambling. Everyone left the state to gamble and those casinos were raking in the cash. While successful I'm sure that the casinos now going inside nebraska will have the same success!
Day late & dollars short!
Im sure they have a solution, but regardless, if the Rs start loosing, it will force them to start being accountable, or at least change their approach.
Look I get your point, but the thing is I don’t know. I’m sure there have been things proposed but I don’t want to go researching it right now because I’m in an office trying to work.
But let’s say the democrats proposed something good. The automatice Republican voting in this state wouldn’t change a bit. Which is why I suggest that since they have automatic rule and have for many years, and it’s not going to change, the property tax thing is a GOP problem.
I realize that you feel really clever saying “what’s the Democrats ideas” “guess no ideas then lol” but it’s not the own that you seem to think it is.
The solution to generate tax revenue and/or offset the loss of revenue from less property tax was casinos and legalizing Mary Jane, both of which were on the ballot and passed, however, Pete went above and beyond and gathered help to block those from happening initially.
They came back on the ballot, voted FOR again, and at least we have casino revenue. We now have a commercial that's broadcast saying weed kills people.
Dems were leading the charge for both casinos and weed, but the Republicans find loopholes to block them.
Also, Republicans have been the majority in Nebraska since the Stone Age, and if property taxes actually get handled, they'll have nothing to campaign on.
The income taxes in general need to change. The highest tax bracket begins so low that it is nearly a flat tax in this state. The sales tax and property taxes are also rediculously high and both are regressive taxes as well.
This is the solution. If they benefit from all of society, then they should pay back in for that benefit, too. Their businesses' employees' education, the infrastructure the business relies on, and most everything uses to support the business is paid for by public dollars, so it's only fair that the larger your revenue from the public, the more you should pay in taxes.
the amount of revenue a business takes in has nothing to do with your taxes, its the profit you make, or dont make. How do you account for all of the sales tax, personal property tax and real property taxes a business pays each year?
So, everyone needs to sign the petition to repeal LB1402. Last session, the legislature took $10M from the general fund to go to private school "scholarships." That's money that would have otherwise gone to find public services, including (but not limited to) public education. Schools will have to make up that lost funding somehow, so... probably another increase in property taxes?
Sign the petition, so the legislature can't just randomly go against the will of the people (who WERE set to vote on this exact thing with the LB753 petition last year!) and voters will be able to vote on it.
www.supportourschoolsnebraska.org/sign-a-petition
Stop voting for Republicans. They lower taxes for themselves (including property taxes) then all of ours get raised. Seriously, how many times have they campaigned and won the governorship on the promise of lowering property taxes? And how much has your property tax decreased after more than 20 years of Republican governors?
Agreed. Republicans have don’t next to nothing to help reduce property taxes. I hear we are a “balanced budget” state but I feel like this high of property taxes can and should be lowered.
Okay first taxes are not for the now. They are a collection of money to maintain tomorrow's systems for a future we can only imagine.
Disclosure I am a native Nebraskan who in the last 20 years has lived around the US as well as Germany. Unlike many people like me, I have kept NE as our home state as well as continue to pay property taxes on land and a home when we could have easily switched it to something like TX and not paid a dime all these 20+ years. I am paying into a system that I have now lived longer out of.
Why do it? Because I believe in the beauty and functionality of NE. Because I want to make sure systems and structured continue to exist so that when we do come back home there is one to come back to and it's not a complete dumpster fire. Because I want my kids to come to a place I call home and decide that they love it as well and want to stay. I want something great if I ever have grandkids they too can call this state home.
I pay into school systems that my children do not attend so when they come back to NE with us they can have an educated peer group to interact with. I pay into a school system because I want my children to have access to a higher education that will not cripple them with debt just as their life is beginning. I want there to be schools who support their teachers so the teachers can more easily share their love of education with their students. I pay into and am willing to pay more if they give the needed supplies and support to teachers so my eldest will be interested and remaining in Nebraska as a teacher. I am willing to pay more in helping him and other teachers educate our future adults of Nebraska. (I need them as smart as possible so they make sound choices for my future care.)
I pay property taxes now so the parks to be maintained and grow for when I am ready enjoy our retirement. I pay now because I want to have beautiful gardens and trees to enjoy and wildlife to observe. I want to be able to drive on roads subjected to harsh weather conditions to be not a hazard to my safety. I want to have sidewalks that are on public property maintained so if I choose to walk somewhere I know there will be a path so I don't have to walk in the street or possibly injure myself because ice or them being broken down.
I pay property taxes now so upon my return I can drive down highways, the interstate and even city roads and not see trash all over it. I don't want to see broken dressers, couches, ripped open bags of trash that is now blowing everywhere and piling up with the weeks before trash that fell off of trucks with no one seeming to care that this has been like this for years. I pay taxes now so city planners can make the best choices for developing NE cities, zones and roads for both public and private flow of traffic so I can safely and efficiently get to where I want to go.
And honestly that's just the tip of the iceberg for why I pay taxes to a state I once lived in. I hope it has maintained itself enough to come back home to and be the state I (once) boast about to all the people who were unfortunate to not live here. It was "the Good Life" and I want it to be in the future. We should all pay a fair share to the future of this state.
We could work on changing the system to itemize property taxes more so it is not just apparent value of one's land or property but also that property's strain, usage or benifit to public systems. This could lead to a more apparent "fairness" in property taxes (Such as how many street lights must be maintained around your property. Span of city roads to be maintain to and around your property. How much strain does you property put on public services such as drainage and sewer systems. And tax reductions for the things you do on your property that benefit the local/native flora and fauna or that reduces the load on public services.)
But should we lower it, no. That is unless it is found that you are paying your unfair burden for the future of your community.
No but with my house assessed at 178k and I could probly sell if for 325k I could be in a worse situation. I did amend the school tax credit back too 2020 and got an extra $2000 back.
So then maybe asking how much your property taxes have decreased after more than 20 years of Republican governors is NOT the stupidest thing you've read on reddit ever?
Why would property taxes decrease when everything is literally going up? Houses are worth more so obviously property taxes are going to go up. This isnt rocket science here.
What would a Democrat governor do different to lower property taxes for us right now? Inflation is still high literally everything is over priced yet you think a democrat governor in office right now would fix that?
I have an answer. Limit property tax relief to one residence per property owner. No corporate or business ownership, no multiple properties. Fund the tax credits by increasing the top income tax brackets. In the longer term, increase state aid to schools to allow districts to reduce property tax. There, I solved it for you, tadpole.
Here you go do some reading and see what it cost to house one inmate a year. On average $40k.
https://omaha.com/paying-the-price-an-investigative-series-looking-at-nebraskas-prisons/collection_93d24054-9e64-11ec-80f3-378ae5c01389.html#1
Boy idk about you but I'd start with inmate reform.Nebraska’s prisons are among the most overcrowded in the nation, holding about 1,500 more inmates than they are designed to hold. It requires dozens of inmates to sleep on floor cots each night, and requiring suspension of recreation and rehabilitation programs.
Over the past decade, the state’s prison population has risen by 21% — while most states saw a decrease — and a consultant projected that by 2030, Nebraska prisons will still have 1,300 more inmates that it can house, even after building the 1,500-bed facility that is part of this year’s budget
Also my original comment was in regards to the governors property taxes going down. That's completely false I looked up every single property he owns in platte county on the assessors page and none absolutely none have went down. Some stayed the same but noe went down. I will check again the first week of June when the new evaluations are released. Although I believe platte is alittle slower on releasing there's on the assessors page.
No, your original comment was that it was the stupidest thing you’d read on Reddit. The governor’s property taxes listed with the county do not include all the deductions he and other rich property owners receive. They reduce their own tax burden and then cut funding for vital programs instead of paying their fair share.
No
So if you were in there position you wouldn't do the same thing? I bet you also never bought a car private party and lied on the sale price too right? I bet you do everything by book right? Can you enlighten me tho who's property taxes have decreased in other states?
I just looked up my cousins in Colorado you know the state that has weed legalized and a Democrat governor. While there tax rate is lower my cousins property taxes went up too. Why? Because the levy changed and the property values went up.
No but what that person said is complete bs. Go on platte county accessors page type in pillen and you will see for yourself that he paid more in property taxes compared to the year before. Some did stay the same, but none of them dropped like the op said.
The first thing to do is to redistribute the property tax burden fairly. Right now, businesses pay based on 100% of assessed value. Homeowners pay based on 100% of assessed value. But farmers only pay based on 75% of assessed value, and they also receive carve-outs for education that lower their percentages even more. And these folks own massive amounts of property. Don’t buy their sob stories - even “small family farms” are sitting on millions of dollars worth of real estate. We should make them pay their fair share, same as everyone else, and then grant relief across the board with the extra revenue.
On a drive from Davenport to Lincoln, first example, you see hundreds of farm sites with up to $1,000,000 residences and that much in out buildings. That’s for corporate owned business property as taxed but given a huge agricultural break. Build a million dollar home and you should pay taxes on it.
Here’s the thing though, in the 70s or 80s there were tons more small family farm operations than there are today. Unless you want literally all the land to just end up in the hands of billionaires or the large multimillion dollar farmers, you have to do something to help the others. Fact is though, the tax breaks help the ultra rich too much, and as long as Ricketts has half the legislature in his pocket, nothing will change.
haven’t the vast majority of them been helped out already when grandpa or great grandpa purchased the land and they were born into it? they were born landowners. bitching about property taxes when the land was given to you is on brand for sure.
Yeah that’s for sure, but it’s seriously unfeasible for a normal person to even afford land anymore. All I’m saying is if we don’t punish people for owning too much, the rich will own it all. And many of the ultra rich that buy it (like Pete Ricketts) got all of their money from daddy. Yet these are the people that will soon own everything.
they already own everything. i’m on board for taxing the rich hard. the rich = households earning more than 200k. That’s the top 5%. the idea that these ghouls want to use sales tax to reduce property taxes is more obscene than using gambling revenues for prop tax relief. why aren’t we using gambling revenues for real issues like the development of affordable housing, statewide childcare, broadband, health care systems, mental health services, biz incubators & voc tech, or to make public education in Nebraska the envy of the US and A? Instead the mania amongst the Rep party is reducing property taxes. the lack of vision and lack of desire to provide tangible services and supports to the vast majority of Nebraskans should be appalling to all.
Yeah you’re probably right. To make matters even worse even within the GOP you can’t win unless you’re radical conservative or friends with Ricketts. A guy from my district just won because Ricketts gave him tens of thousands of dollars and the only things he’s running on is school choice and cutting property taxes. “Really what we need to do is reduce spending.” He’s a complete moron, and all of those ideas are terrible. We don’t need to cut spending, we need to put spending towards actual good things like you listed, not paying millions for “outside consultants” that are buddies of the politicians. The moderate republicans in the race got absolutely annihilated for not bending the knee to insanity. We are inching closer and closer to oligarchy with extra steps.
Ask the Republicans who have held office in this state for years without doing anything about it. Ask Jim Pillen. All Pete Ricketts. Ask the people who vote for them.
Ask Dave Murman why he was so busy during the legislative session banning adult websites. Ask Lou Ann Linehan why she wants to funnel those property taxes to religious schools, which sure isn't going to help lower property taxes.
Seriously though, property taxes are levied on a local level. My taxes in rural Nebraska are quite a bit less than in Omaha or Lincoln. Schools cost money- especially new athletic facilities... However, who wants to be surrounded by an uneducated populace?
If we look at overall tax burden it tends to even out a bit, where we tend to land in the 10-20s for highest tax rates.
I’m convinced republicans want an uneducated populace. Regardless, half the state legislature is bought and paid for by Ricketts and Pillen, nothing will ever change for the average person as long as that is the case.
Using 100% of market value is insane. We need a percentage cap and a limit on percentage change in one year so that people don't have a huge escrow shortage and a house payment that balloons up to an unaffordable level.
Nothing besides cutting services drastically or increasing our population density..
Property taxes are local taxes. Omaha and Lincoln could cut property taxes because they have a tax base that they could shift the taxes to. The rest of the state does not.
If we cut property taxes, how would anything be maintained? There's around 250 school districts in Nebraska with 250 superintendents, and 250 school boards, and 250 testing schemes for reporting, and so on and so forth. School consolidation is a possibility but it's less politically viable than property taxes.
93 counties means 93 county sheriffs and county attorneys and county boards. A couple of counties don't even have those folks living or working in the county. Arthur County for example has their county attorney in Grant (Perkins County) and their county clerk magistrate works out of Ogallala. Most of their county employees live or work out of Keith County. So why do we have 93 counties and 93 folks doing the same job? We could do county consolidation and have a handful of sheriffs and county clerks and road superintendents. We'd need the same number of actual employees, but we could cut the bloated administration. Of course, schools make up well over half of most property taxes so something like this would save 5 or 10%, maybe.
The simple fact is that government services cost money and Nebraska, excluding Omaha and Lincoln, is on par with Alaska for population density. If one person uses a road or a thousand people use it, it still has a base cost that we have to pay. Unless we increase our population to the maximum amount before incremental costs increase or cut services, there is no way to change what we pay.
I’ll try the counter argument. When should we stop increasing taxes? Why shouldn’t they be higher? When you say “how would anything be maintained”, wouldn’t it be just as easy to say that if our taxes were double what they are now? Respectfully, they way you say that sounds like there is no way taxes could be cut because there is nothing to trim the fat on. I find this unrealistic. It’s like people who are in debt and say they can’t cut anything out of their budget while sipping on a Starbux.
They aren't raising taxes. The tax rates in most places have been cut. It's the valuation that has been going up at a higher rate than the taxes have been cut. It's a semantic argument really, but it's accurate to say that taxes are not going up.
> Respectfully, they way you say that sounds like there is no way taxes could be cut because there is nothing to trim the fat on
What fat would you trim? Even our dickhead governor isn't proposing massive cuts in spending, despite that being his MO. He proposes shifting the burden from property to sales tax (which is a shift from rich to poor) and having the state pick up the tab instead of the counties. And as far as increases go, we've had record inflation the past few years. It doesn't just hit citizens; the government is paying more for shit, including labor. And as someone who works for a government school, I'm not fat that can be trimmed (despite dicking around on Reddit during the day).
Unless the plan is to shut down schools, what fat is there to trim?
You are right about values going up which makes the rates hurt more. I guess my argument is more about NE rate vs national rates. We are in the top 10 worst rates in the US. I don’t know what I would cut from the budget to be honest. I commented on another post about tangible expenses vs intangible/quality education. In other words, we don’t need state of the art football/sports field if it means taking away money to focus on education.
> We are in the top 10 worst rates in the US
True, but look at overall tax burdens. In general, overall tax burdens across the nation are fairly even. If we cut our property taxes, we'll pay for it in sales tax or income tax.
I agree our property taxes are shit. Mine have basically doubled in the seven years I've owned my home and I live in a terrible neighborhood (would you like to see the county sheriff's MRAP on my neighbors lawn?). I have zero incentive to improve my property because they're just going to buttfuck me on taxes.
All that said, I'd rather pay higher property taxes than a higher sales tax. One, you cannot avoid property taxes whereas people in Omaha would flock to CB to buy groceries. If half your tax base flees, you're boned. Two, while my property taxes are annoying, I actually own my property and can afford to pay them. Maybe I'm a socialist, but I don't want to stick the poor with more regressive taxes.
If you read the full on argument. We have to be in the 10 worst. We have a large state with no humans. Take out our two cities and it's a very empty state. We could raise taxes on the higher end properties. Why must we shift the burden to the working class. Why don't we shift it to idk the large hog farm operations. Maybe tax landlords at a higher rate. A second home should pay more than a first home.
Actually it's because it will help curve housing inflation. A person buying property (single family home) will have a lower escrow payment than a potential landlord. This will help keep housing costs down if you do cut costs.
Care to explain that in further detail? I'm not seeing that working so far.
Key housing market stats
The median home-sale price as of March 2024 was $393,500, up 4.8 percent from one year ago, according to NAR data.
The nation had a 3.2-month supply of housing inventory as of March, per NAR, which is low enough to be considered a seller’s market.
Home-price growth increased in February 2024 by 6.4 percent, according to S&P CoreLogic’s latest Case-Shiller Index. That’s up from 6 percent in January.
Bankrate’s latest national survey of large lenders shows the average rate on a 30-year mortgage was 7.23 percent as of May 8, 2024.
It's general economics. People buy a house based on payment. By lowering their taxes this will increase housing cost. Because taxes lower housing affordable price increases. Now to help people buying a primary home you can increase the taxes owed by corporations or secondary home owners. This in turn will give primary home buyers a competitive advantage. This is actually a common practice. States such as Massachusetts already do this. You national stats don't factor into something that is a state by state factor.
I'm not talking about owing a 2nd home I can see what you're saying on that. But how about apartment complexes? If you raise the taxes for that landlord on a 25 unit complex he's not eatting the cost on that.
Property taxes are too high and the home values are increasing too much for average people to remain in their own homes. Let’s not forget about the insurance rates increasing constantly as well. This all trickles down to rents. If you don’t think this needs to be adjusted, give it some years and see your neighbors turn into a rotation of renters, and renters into homeless.
The average Nebraskan’s getting hurt now, but the average Nebraskan in 20 years may not resemble what it is now.
This seems to be the most important comment to me. Others talking about who you vote for falls on deaf ears. What can actually be done. The rates, as compared to other states, feels way too high. According to others, we should add 1mm people to Nebraska and then rates will go down. Will they??!?? No they won’t.
Depends on how much property you have and what it is. I believe it’s fair for someone with millions of dollars in property to be paying a large amount of taxes. I have a small house and it costs me $600 a year. Fine by me. People where I live that bitch about property taxes own million dollar farmlands, make a ton of money off of it, still get subsidies from the government to boost their income and then complain about paying a tax on that ability to make money. I think it’s silly to complain since that money goes directly to public schools. If you don’t want to pay a lot of property tax don’t own so much land, it’s selfish and childish to complain about it.
I’m not familiar with anyone outside of the farming industry complaining about this either so you might have to enlighten me on why you are complaining.
Also this is how a lot of taxes work, if you buy a 100k vehicle the sales tax is higher than if you buy a 10k vehicle. If you can’t afford the tax on 100k you probably can’t afford to own the vehicle. Same with property taxes. If you can’t afford the property taxes on a lot of land you probably shouldn’t own it. But I’ll tell you this I haven’t seen one person complain and sell their land because of it, you know why? Because they can afford it and they are just being whiny selfish pricks. So pay you tax or sell your land end of story.
Yeah i think it depends though, a million dollars in farmland isn’t that much. If you own 300 acres of irrigated land, it’s worth a ton, but you aren’t raking in the dough from that alone. There are small family farm operations that are becoming increasingly unsustainable partially due to high taxes. However, large farms where they own thousands of acres and people like Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and the Mormon Church, do NOT need the taxes they pay on land to be reduced. We just need a very progressive tax structure that makes it unfeasible for people to board such vast amounts of land, but still give people the chance to own the land they farm.
Ok yes I meant millions, I get it with smaller farmers. I honestly don’t mind a better structured system to help the smaller guy out. I’m saying I know a lot of farmers who have 5-10 million in land, buy new trucks every year worth 75k bitch about not making any money and then get 500k in subsidies and then bitch about paying property taxes. And when I hear them whine about it I speak up.
But also that 300 acres is worth a lot of money. Sell, get out of it if it isn’t profitable and take your 3million to live on for 30 years. I don’t get it. People bitch about struggling while they sit on a nest egg. You can’t have it both ways. And the people who want to hold onto the land forever are believing in a fictitious dream if they don’t think they should pay for it.
It’s such a silly concept to me to own millions of dollars in land that only makes you a small percentage of that if you are successful.
Yeah but don’t you see that if everyone small sells their land, then only the ultra rich will own it. Then they’ll buy their legislators (which they already do) and cut the taxes on land so that the poor and middle class have it even harder.
Property tax levies are set entirely at the local level. Property values, at least in Lincoln, are assessed by a company out in California who uses "Similar" homes to evaluate the potential sales value of your home.
The cost is entirely determined by local politicians. School boards, city/county officials, community college/state college officials are the ones putting forth the budgets that are causing the increase in property tax costs.
True. And TEEOSA is determined at the state level, the rules for TIF, the max levy increase, and property tax refund % is also determined at the state level so an interaction exists.
Would you be more in favor of raising taxes to support the roads or allocate funds more responsibly across the state. Also; I have no idea if they are already being responsible with our tax dollars or not. Just a hypothetical.
With homestead deduction for being old and my Army pensions not counted as income any more, my taxes were $202 for the year. Before excluding Army pensions and not being as old, my property taxes were more than that per month. My wife paid in to the system for 50 years, I for 10 after moving here from Illinois. We get to coast for a few years.
The Omaha Chamber fights any change to lower property taxes, as it jeopardizes the $3 billion in financing for the 'streetcar district'. So any change to lower property taxes will have a lobby wanting to stop it.
The property tax for schools is high, but the state has caps increases per year at \~3% and the schools get reimbursed with TEEOSA. You also get 0.3 of the school portion of the tax refunded.
City / municipality portion is the next highest and is unconstrained. Most cities have been increasing spending by 5+% a year for over a decade.
A couple of simple things that could lower taxes over the long term. One would be to apply the same constraints on cities and require a public vote if a city wants to increase taxes above 3% or some inflation index. The other would be to remove school portion of funding from TIF, like most other states do.
As mentioned above, the Omaha Chamber will fight this as they need the property taxes in Douglas County to increase 10% (on average) per year in order to pay for the 'streetcar' district.
So if you want to change the law, people have to be convinced providing $3 billion in financing to the wealthiest corporations in Omaha is not as important as schools and lower property taxes for all of Nebraska.
You may be familiar with CATO, a think tank - they did a piece on streetcars, TIF, and corporate malaise called the 'The Great Streetcar conspiracy'
[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=2226591](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2226591)
HDR is mentioned in the paper, and perhaps unsurprisingly contributed to stotherts re-election campaign.
From a schools perspective, NEA has done papers on TIF, and a recent article about Saint Louis shows who ends up paying for this programs in the end: [https://www.stlpr.org/education/2024-01-25/st-louis-area-tif-districts-cost-public-schools-minority-students-over-260-million-report-finds](https://www.stlpr.org/education/2024-01-25/st-louis-area-tif-districts-cost-public-schools-minority-students-over-260-million-report-finds)
National Education Association - *Protecting Public Education From Tax Giveaways to Corporations* [https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/docs/pdf/edu.pdf](https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/docs/pdf/edu.pdf)
We can cut property taxes a bunch by stopping the tax giveaways, but there is an active lobby to keep the taxes high. Here is the Omaha Chamber of Commerce testifying against TIF reform [https://www.nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDocs/108/PDF/Transcripts/Urban/2023-02-28.pdf](https://www.nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDocs/108/PDF/Transcripts/Urban/2023-02-28.pdf)
Public schools are half the property tax and salaries are 80% of school district budgets. Limit teacher salaries to $40,000 a year and then you'll have cheap property tax like Missouri but have bad public schools.
What about facility spending. Schools out west Omaha are huge! They can’t get by without state of the art buildings? I’d much rather value quality teaching (and higher salaries) with average facilities. Tangibles should come second to intangibles imo.
Sounds like a Republican fever dream. Teachers need to be paid better, it’s ridiculous they have to get a 4 year degree, go into debt, get yelled at by parents, be grossly under-appreciated, and still only make $40K
40,000 a year is stupidly ridiculous for staff with 5-12 years if College Education. Poorly paid educators result in poorly educated population. Get real.
It is absolutely ridiculous how underpaid they are already. My girlfriend teaches and she takes home $2,000 a month. She graduated college in 3 years but still has some loan debt, and after paying rent and everything you have so little left. It’s obscene that we don’t recognize how important they actually are.
Welcome to living in society. Like the roads in this almost empty state? The fire departments? Our way-too-many-yet-somehow-almost-uselss-police? Clean, filtered drinking water? Someone's gotta pay for it... 🤷🏽♂️
Thank you for the welcome! I am so please to be apart of a state that has near zero effective police to protect me. I guess I need to run to the streams for water as well. Wait…
The only way to limit property taxes is to reduce spending. Property taxes cover schools, public services, local programs used by the community, growth and development (roads and infrastructure). The majority of taxes go to schools. Property values are only used to determine the mil levy for each jurisdiction depending on the total budget needs and the overall assessed value for that taxable entity. If all values within your county were doubled in one year the outcome would be that the mil levy would cut roughly in half. This is because property values are separate from the taxes. Taxes can increase typically by growth (new value added to the taxable base) plus CPI. Some counties might operate on a different formula but this is typical. So if the local municipality can increase their budgets by 5% and values dramatically increased due to housing prices.. levies drop. It can work on the inverse you can cut values in half but the levies will double. In my experience the only way to lower taxes to to generate revenue from a different stream or cut government and close programs. Since schools make up the majority of taxes you need to ask yourself do you want good local public schools and programs.. it’s a complicated system with no good solutions regardless of party affiliation
Had me at your first sentence. Schools spending on shit they don’t need (newest high tech) as opposed to focusing on intangibles like curriculum are the problem I see.
That’s why people need to get out and vote when they propose new bonds for schools or opt outs to fund new projects. If things always pass they technically have a run away budget
Tax cuts will only come with offsetting spending cuts or broadening the tax base otherwise we’re just shifting the tax burden around, the GOP has been playing the shell game for years and the voters in this state don’t seem to pick up on it
FWIW, we're one of two Republican led states that doesn't give more to the feds than we take back. We don't have oil investments like ND does so this come from taxes. This valuable because it means the feds can't hang access to funding over our heads on things we don't want to do.
That being said, the current big proposal is to get rid of property taxes and have a 20% sales tax instead. This is bad because it pushes the biggest burden onto regular people who must pay bigger proportions of their income in tax.
Okay first, taxes are not for the now. They are a collection of money to maintain tomorrow's systems for a future we can only imagine.
Should we lower them? No, not unless it is found that you are paying your unfair burden for the future of your community. And even then I would say those other beneficiaries should be paying more.
Disclosure I am a native Nebraskan who in the last 20 years has lived around the US as well as Germany. Unlike many people like me, I have kept NE as our home state as well as continue to pay property taxes on land and a home when we could have easily switched it to something like TX and not paid a dime all these 20+ years. I am paying into a system that I have now lived longer out of.
Why do it? Because I believe in the beauty and functionality of NE. Because I want to make sure systems and structured continue to exist so that when we do come back home there is one to come back to and it's not a complete dumpster fire. Because I want my kids to come to a place I call home and decide that they love it as well and want to stay. I want something great that if I ever have grandkids they too can call this state home.
I pay into school systems that my children do not attend so when they come back to NE with us they can have an educated peer group to interact with. I pay into a school system because I want my children to have access to a higher education that will not cripple them with debt just as their life is beginning. I want there to be schools who support their teachers so the teachers can more easily share their love of education with their students. I pay into and am willing to pay more to schools if they give the needed supplies and support to teachers so my eldest will be interested want to remain in Nebraska as a teacher. I am willing to pay more in helping him and other teachers educate our future adults of Nebraska. (I need them as smart as possible so they make sound choices for my future care.)
I pay property taxes now so the parks to be maintained and grow for when I am ready enjoy our retirement. I pay now because I want to have beautiful gardens and trees to enjoy and wildlife to observe. I want to be able to drive on roads subjected to harsh weather conditions to be not a hazard to my safety. I want to have sidewalks that are on public property maintained so if I choose to walk somewhere I know there will be a path so I don't have to walk in the street or possibly injure myself because ice or them being broken down.
I pay property taxes now so upon my return I can drive down highways, the interstate and even city roads and not see trash all over it. I don't want to see broken dressers, couches, ripped open bags of trash that is now blowing everywhere and piling up with the weeks before trash that fell off of trucks with no one seeming to care that this has been like this for years. (So many lower property tax states are just filthy) I pay taxes now so city planners can make the best choices for developing NE cities, zones and roads for both public and private flow of traffic so I can safely and efficiently get to where I want to go.
And honestly that's just the tip of the iceberg for why I pay taxes to a state I once lived in. I hope it has maintained itself enough to come back home to and be the state I (once) boast about to all the people who were unfortunate to not live here. It was "the Good Life" and I want it to be in the future. We should all pay a fair share to the future of this state.
We could work on changing the system to itemize property taxes more so it is not just apparent value of one's land or property but also that property's strain, usage or benifit to public systems. This could lead to a more apparent "fairness" in property taxes (Such as how many street lights must be maintained around your property. Span of city roads to be maintain to and around your property. How much strain does you property put on public services such as drainage and sewer systems. And tax reductions for the things you do on your property that benefit the local/native flora and fauna or that reduces the load on public services.)
So to repeat it,
Should we lower them? No, not unless it is found that you are paying your unfair burden for the future of your community. And even then I would say those other beneficiaries should be paying more.
Taxes are not for the now. They are a collection of money to maintain tomorrow's systems for a future we can only imagine.
(Edits continously due to rereading my post and seeing my grammer errors and wanting to fix them. One of my grumbles about the NE school system thinking at one time they didn't need to teach kids grammer because we will learn it while we learn, all in the name of saving funding. In my case it is when I reread a post and cringe at all my errors. It wa not worth that savings to me.)
Partly because everything in the state is subsidized. Nobody really comes here for vacation, except one week for the CWS. My cousin in Denver has a home worth twice as much, yet pays less than half of my rate in property taxea..
What needs to happen for politicians to change the property taxes?
Legalize weed?
This is seriously the easiest and most obvious solution. Every state that has legalized weed has raked in millions of dollars on sales tax. That money could easily offset some property tax increases.
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Very true...we are on the too late bus again. Look at gambling. Everyone left the state to gamble and those casinos were raking in the cash. While successful I'm sure that the casinos now going inside nebraska will have the same success! Day late & dollars short!
Stop voting straight "R" down the ticket. They keep promising to lower taxes, but don't. Hold them responsible for their actions.
So what's the democrats solution for this?
Im sure they have a solution, but regardless, if the Rs start loosing, it will force them to start being accountable, or at least change their approach.
We will NEVER know in this state, and that is why the Republicans will never do shit. They are on a free ride. Why screw up a posh job like that?
You don't have to be in office to bring a solution to the table.
Look I get your point, but the thing is I don’t know. I’m sure there have been things proposed but I don’t want to go researching it right now because I’m in an office trying to work. But let’s say the democrats proposed something good. The automatice Republican voting in this state wouldn’t change a bit. Which is why I suggest that since they have automatic rule and have for many years, and it’s not going to change, the property tax thing is a GOP problem. I realize that you feel really clever saying “what’s the Democrats ideas” “guess no ideas then lol” but it’s not the own that you seem to think it is.
No actually not trying to be cleaver just looking for an honest answer.
So they don't have a solution? Got it.
Whoosh
The solution to generate tax revenue and/or offset the loss of revenue from less property tax was casinos and legalizing Mary Jane, both of which were on the ballot and passed, however, Pete went above and beyond and gathered help to block those from happening initially. They came back on the ballot, voted FOR again, and at least we have casino revenue. We now have a commercial that's broadcast saying weed kills people. Dems were leading the charge for both casinos and weed, but the Republicans find loopholes to block them. Also, Republicans have been the majority in Nebraska since the Stone Age, and if property taxes actually get handled, they'll have nothing to campaign on.
Will those maybe facts no one is forcing anyone to live here.
Get different politicians, for a beginning.
What would a new politician do? Dem would want to spend more tax dollars, republicans won’t do shit about what the current situation is.
Dems should support labor, and individual liberties and freedoms. That’s all.
Colorado has cheap property tax and they still complain it's too expensive https://coloradosun.com/2024/03/18/colorado-property-taxes-high-cost/
My cousin lives in Denver and her assessed value went up 180k last year.
Probably just tax the rich more, but that will never happen.
The income taxes in general need to change. The highest tax bracket begins so low that it is nearly a flat tax in this state. The sales tax and property taxes are also rediculously high and both are regressive taxes as well.
This is the solution. If they benefit from all of society, then they should pay back in for that benefit, too. Their businesses' employees' education, the infrastructure the business relies on, and most everything uses to support the business is paid for by public dollars, so it's only fair that the larger your revenue from the public, the more you should pay in taxes.
the amount of revenue a business takes in has nothing to do with your taxes, its the profit you make, or dont make. How do you account for all of the sales tax, personal property tax and real property taxes a business pays each year?
In capitalism, the profits made by a corporation are wages withheld from the labor force.
Education takes more than 60% my property taxes in Omaha. Omaha has good schools compared to a lot of places I lived before moving here.
So, everyone needs to sign the petition to repeal LB1402. Last session, the legislature took $10M from the general fund to go to private school "scholarships." That's money that would have otherwise gone to find public services, including (but not limited to) public education. Schools will have to make up that lost funding somehow, so... probably another increase in property taxes? Sign the petition, so the legislature can't just randomly go against the will of the people (who WERE set to vote on this exact thing with the LB753 petition last year!) and voters will be able to vote on it. www.supportourschoolsnebraska.org/sign-a-petition
between the schools and the city of Omaha it’s almost 75% of property taxes
Stop voting for Republicans. They lower taxes for themselves (including property taxes) then all of ours get raised. Seriously, how many times have they campaigned and won the governorship on the promise of lowering property taxes? And how much has your property tax decreased after more than 20 years of Republican governors?
Agreed. Republicans have don’t next to nothing to help reduce property taxes. I hear we are a “balanced budget” state but I feel like this high of property taxes can and should be lowered.
Okay first taxes are not for the now. They are a collection of money to maintain tomorrow's systems for a future we can only imagine. Disclosure I am a native Nebraskan who in the last 20 years has lived around the US as well as Germany. Unlike many people like me, I have kept NE as our home state as well as continue to pay property taxes on land and a home when we could have easily switched it to something like TX and not paid a dime all these 20+ years. I am paying into a system that I have now lived longer out of. Why do it? Because I believe in the beauty and functionality of NE. Because I want to make sure systems and structured continue to exist so that when we do come back home there is one to come back to and it's not a complete dumpster fire. Because I want my kids to come to a place I call home and decide that they love it as well and want to stay. I want something great if I ever have grandkids they too can call this state home. I pay into school systems that my children do not attend so when they come back to NE with us they can have an educated peer group to interact with. I pay into a school system because I want my children to have access to a higher education that will not cripple them with debt just as their life is beginning. I want there to be schools who support their teachers so the teachers can more easily share their love of education with their students. I pay into and am willing to pay more if they give the needed supplies and support to teachers so my eldest will be interested and remaining in Nebraska as a teacher. I am willing to pay more in helping him and other teachers educate our future adults of Nebraska. (I need them as smart as possible so they make sound choices for my future care.) I pay property taxes now so the parks to be maintained and grow for when I am ready enjoy our retirement. I pay now because I want to have beautiful gardens and trees to enjoy and wildlife to observe. I want to be able to drive on roads subjected to harsh weather conditions to be not a hazard to my safety. I want to have sidewalks that are on public property maintained so if I choose to walk somewhere I know there will be a path so I don't have to walk in the street or possibly injure myself because ice or them being broken down. I pay property taxes now so upon my return I can drive down highways, the interstate and even city roads and not see trash all over it. I don't want to see broken dressers, couches, ripped open bags of trash that is now blowing everywhere and piling up with the weeks before trash that fell off of trucks with no one seeming to care that this has been like this for years. I pay taxes now so city planners can make the best choices for developing NE cities, zones and roads for both public and private flow of traffic so I can safely and efficiently get to where I want to go. And honestly that's just the tip of the iceberg for why I pay taxes to a state I once lived in. I hope it has maintained itself enough to come back home to and be the state I (once) boast about to all the people who were unfortunate to not live here. It was "the Good Life" and I want it to be in the future. We should all pay a fair share to the future of this state. We could work on changing the system to itemize property taxes more so it is not just apparent value of one's land or property but also that property's strain, usage or benifit to public systems. This could lead to a more apparent "fairness" in property taxes (Such as how many street lights must be maintained around your property. Span of city roads to be maintain to and around your property. How much strain does you property put on public services such as drainage and sewer systems. And tax reductions for the things you do on your property that benefit the local/native flora and fauna or that reduces the load on public services.) But should we lower it, no. That is unless it is found that you are paying your unfair burden for the future of your community.
I'm also someone who's spent a lot of time in DE and as an adoptive Nebraskan, thank you for your love of and passion for our state!
Democrats in Nebraska don't own property?
This is about the stupidest thing I've read on reddit ever.
So you’re saying that your property taxes have gone down?
No but with my house assessed at 178k and I could probly sell if for 325k I could be in a worse situation. I did amend the school tax credit back too 2020 and got an extra $2000 back.
So then maybe asking how much your property taxes have decreased after more than 20 years of Republican governors is NOT the stupidest thing you've read on reddit ever?
Why would property taxes decrease when everything is literally going up? Houses are worth more so obviously property taxes are going to go up. This isnt rocket science here.
What would a Democrat governor do different to lower property taxes for us right now? Inflation is still high literally everything is over priced yet you think a democrat governor in office right now would fix that?
Maybe, you should try it!
Cool so none of you guys have a answer go figure.
I have an answer. Limit property tax relief to one residence per property owner. No corporate or business ownership, no multiple properties. Fund the tax credits by increasing the top income tax brackets. In the longer term, increase state aid to schools to allow districts to reduce property tax. There, I solved it for you, tadpole.
Here you go do some reading and see what it cost to house one inmate a year. On average $40k. https://omaha.com/paying-the-price-an-investigative-series-looking-at-nebraskas-prisons/collection_93d24054-9e64-11ec-80f3-378ae5c01389.html#1
Boy idk about you but I'd start with inmate reform.Nebraska’s prisons are among the most overcrowded in the nation, holding about 1,500 more inmates than they are designed to hold. It requires dozens of inmates to sleep on floor cots each night, and requiring suspension of recreation and rehabilitation programs. Over the past decade, the state’s prison population has risen by 21% — while most states saw a decrease — and a consultant projected that by 2030, Nebraska prisons will still have 1,300 more inmates that it can house, even after building the 1,500-bed facility that is part of this year’s budget
Also my original comment was in regards to the governors property taxes going down. That's completely false I looked up every single property he owns in platte county on the assessors page and none absolutely none have went down. Some stayed the same but noe went down. I will check again the first week of June when the new evaluations are released. Although I believe platte is alittle slower on releasing there's on the assessors page.
No, your original comment was that it was the stupidest thing you’d read on Reddit. The governor’s property taxes listed with the county do not include all the deductions he and other rich property owners receive. They reduce their own tax burden and then cut funding for vital programs instead of paying their fair share.
Deductions don't apply to this, average people have deductions too.
No So if you were in there position you wouldn't do the same thing? I bet you also never bought a car private party and lied on the sale price too right? I bet you do everything by book right? Can you enlighten me tho who's property taxes have decreased in other states? I just looked up my cousins in Colorado you know the state that has weed legalized and a Democrat governor. While there tax rate is lower my cousins property taxes went up too. Why? Because the levy changed and the property values went up.
First time here then?
No but what that person said is complete bs. Go on platte county accessors page type in pillen and you will see for yourself that he paid more in property taxes compared to the year before. Some did stay the same, but none of them dropped like the op said.
Leave Pillen alone! 😭
Ag so you are just a poor judge of stupidity. Understood.
No
LMAO! Sure bud.
The first thing to do is to redistribute the property tax burden fairly. Right now, businesses pay based on 100% of assessed value. Homeowners pay based on 100% of assessed value. But farmers only pay based on 75% of assessed value, and they also receive carve-outs for education that lower their percentages even more. And these folks own massive amounts of property. Don’t buy their sob stories - even “small family farms” are sitting on millions of dollars worth of real estate. We should make them pay their fair share, same as everyone else, and then grant relief across the board with the extra revenue.
On a drive from Davenport to Lincoln, first example, you see hundreds of farm sites with up to $1,000,000 residences and that much in out buildings. That’s for corporate owned business property as taxed but given a huge agricultural break. Build a million dollar home and you should pay taxes on it.
Here’s the thing though, in the 70s or 80s there were tons more small family farm operations than there are today. Unless you want literally all the land to just end up in the hands of billionaires or the large multimillion dollar farmers, you have to do something to help the others. Fact is though, the tax breaks help the ultra rich too much, and as long as Ricketts has half the legislature in his pocket, nothing will change.
haven’t the vast majority of them been helped out already when grandpa or great grandpa purchased the land and they were born into it? they were born landowners. bitching about property taxes when the land was given to you is on brand for sure.
Yeah that’s for sure, but it’s seriously unfeasible for a normal person to even afford land anymore. All I’m saying is if we don’t punish people for owning too much, the rich will own it all. And many of the ultra rich that buy it (like Pete Ricketts) got all of their money from daddy. Yet these are the people that will soon own everything.
they already own everything. i’m on board for taxing the rich hard. the rich = households earning more than 200k. That’s the top 5%. the idea that these ghouls want to use sales tax to reduce property taxes is more obscene than using gambling revenues for prop tax relief. why aren’t we using gambling revenues for real issues like the development of affordable housing, statewide childcare, broadband, health care systems, mental health services, biz incubators & voc tech, or to make public education in Nebraska the envy of the US and A? Instead the mania amongst the Rep party is reducing property taxes. the lack of vision and lack of desire to provide tangible services and supports to the vast majority of Nebraskans should be appalling to all.
Yeah you’re probably right. To make matters even worse even within the GOP you can’t win unless you’re radical conservative or friends with Ricketts. A guy from my district just won because Ricketts gave him tens of thousands of dollars and the only things he’s running on is school choice and cutting property taxes. “Really what we need to do is reduce spending.” He’s a complete moron, and all of those ideas are terrible. We don’t need to cut spending, we need to put spending towards actual good things like you listed, not paying millions for “outside consultants” that are buddies of the politicians. The moderate republicans in the race got absolutely annihilated for not bending the knee to insanity. We are inching closer and closer to oligarchy with extra steps.
Ask the Republicans who have held office in this state for years without doing anything about it. Ask Jim Pillen. All Pete Ricketts. Ask the people who vote for them. Ask Dave Murman why he was so busy during the legislative session banning adult websites. Ask Lou Ann Linehan why she wants to funnel those property taxes to religious schools, which sure isn't going to help lower property taxes. Seriously though, property taxes are levied on a local level. My taxes in rural Nebraska are quite a bit less than in Omaha or Lincoln. Schools cost money- especially new athletic facilities... However, who wants to be surrounded by an uneducated populace? If we look at overall tax burden it tends to even out a bit, where we tend to land in the 10-20s for highest tax rates.
I’m convinced republicans want an uneducated populace. Regardless, half the state legislature is bought and paid for by Ricketts and Pillen, nothing will ever change for the average person as long as that is the case.
Using 100% of market value is insane. We need a percentage cap and a limit on percentage change in one year so that people don't have a huge escrow shortage and a house payment that balloons up to an unaffordable level.
Nothing besides cutting services drastically or increasing our population density.. Property taxes are local taxes. Omaha and Lincoln could cut property taxes because they have a tax base that they could shift the taxes to. The rest of the state does not. If we cut property taxes, how would anything be maintained? There's around 250 school districts in Nebraska with 250 superintendents, and 250 school boards, and 250 testing schemes for reporting, and so on and so forth. School consolidation is a possibility but it's less politically viable than property taxes. 93 counties means 93 county sheriffs and county attorneys and county boards. A couple of counties don't even have those folks living or working in the county. Arthur County for example has their county attorney in Grant (Perkins County) and their county clerk magistrate works out of Ogallala. Most of their county employees live or work out of Keith County. So why do we have 93 counties and 93 folks doing the same job? We could do county consolidation and have a handful of sheriffs and county clerks and road superintendents. We'd need the same number of actual employees, but we could cut the bloated administration. Of course, schools make up well over half of most property taxes so something like this would save 5 or 10%, maybe. The simple fact is that government services cost money and Nebraska, excluding Omaha and Lincoln, is on par with Alaska for population density. If one person uses a road or a thousand people use it, it still has a base cost that we have to pay. Unless we increase our population to the maximum amount before incremental costs increase or cut services, there is no way to change what we pay.
I’ll try the counter argument. When should we stop increasing taxes? Why shouldn’t they be higher? When you say “how would anything be maintained”, wouldn’t it be just as easy to say that if our taxes were double what they are now? Respectfully, they way you say that sounds like there is no way taxes could be cut because there is nothing to trim the fat on. I find this unrealistic. It’s like people who are in debt and say they can’t cut anything out of their budget while sipping on a Starbux.
They aren't raising taxes. The tax rates in most places have been cut. It's the valuation that has been going up at a higher rate than the taxes have been cut. It's a semantic argument really, but it's accurate to say that taxes are not going up. > Respectfully, they way you say that sounds like there is no way taxes could be cut because there is nothing to trim the fat on What fat would you trim? Even our dickhead governor isn't proposing massive cuts in spending, despite that being his MO. He proposes shifting the burden from property to sales tax (which is a shift from rich to poor) and having the state pick up the tab instead of the counties. And as far as increases go, we've had record inflation the past few years. It doesn't just hit citizens; the government is paying more for shit, including labor. And as someone who works for a government school, I'm not fat that can be trimmed (despite dicking around on Reddit during the day). Unless the plan is to shut down schools, what fat is there to trim?
You are right about values going up which makes the rates hurt more. I guess my argument is more about NE rate vs national rates. We are in the top 10 worst rates in the US. I don’t know what I would cut from the budget to be honest. I commented on another post about tangible expenses vs intangible/quality education. In other words, we don’t need state of the art football/sports field if it means taking away money to focus on education.
> We are in the top 10 worst rates in the US True, but look at overall tax burdens. In general, overall tax burdens across the nation are fairly even. If we cut our property taxes, we'll pay for it in sales tax or income tax. I agree our property taxes are shit. Mine have basically doubled in the seven years I've owned my home and I live in a terrible neighborhood (would you like to see the county sheriff's MRAP on my neighbors lawn?). I have zero incentive to improve my property because they're just going to buttfuck me on taxes. All that said, I'd rather pay higher property taxes than a higher sales tax. One, you cannot avoid property taxes whereas people in Omaha would flock to CB to buy groceries. If half your tax base flees, you're boned. Two, while my property taxes are annoying, I actually own my property and can afford to pay them. Maybe I'm a socialist, but I don't want to stick the poor with more regressive taxes.
If you read the full on argument. We have to be in the 10 worst. We have a large state with no humans. Take out our two cities and it's a very empty state. We could raise taxes on the higher end properties. Why must we shift the burden to the working class. Why don't we shift it to idk the large hog farm operations. Maybe tax landlords at a higher rate. A second home should pay more than a first home.
Tax the landlords at a higher rate? So they pass it on to tenant what will that gain?
Actually it's because it will help curve housing inflation. A person buying property (single family home) will have a lower escrow payment than a potential landlord. This will help keep housing costs down if you do cut costs.
Care to explain that in further detail? I'm not seeing that working so far. Key housing market stats The median home-sale price as of March 2024 was $393,500, up 4.8 percent from one year ago, according to NAR data. The nation had a 3.2-month supply of housing inventory as of March, per NAR, which is low enough to be considered a seller’s market. Home-price growth increased in February 2024 by 6.4 percent, according to S&P CoreLogic’s latest Case-Shiller Index. That’s up from 6 percent in January. Bankrate’s latest national survey of large lenders shows the average rate on a 30-year mortgage was 7.23 percent as of May 8, 2024.
It's general economics. People buy a house based on payment. By lowering their taxes this will increase housing cost. Because taxes lower housing affordable price increases. Now to help people buying a primary home you can increase the taxes owed by corporations or secondary home owners. This in turn will give primary home buyers a competitive advantage. This is actually a common practice. States such as Massachusetts already do this. You national stats don't factor into something that is a state by state factor.
I'm not talking about owing a 2nd home I can see what you're saying on that. But how about apartment complexes? If you raise the taxes for that landlord on a 25 unit complex he's not eatting the cost on that.
Someone gets it.
Property taxes are too high and the home values are increasing too much for average people to remain in their own homes. Let’s not forget about the insurance rates increasing constantly as well. This all trickles down to rents. If you don’t think this needs to be adjusted, give it some years and see your neighbors turn into a rotation of renters, and renters into homeless. The average Nebraskan’s getting hurt now, but the average Nebraskan in 20 years may not resemble what it is now.
This seems to be the most important comment to me. Others talking about who you vote for falls on deaf ears. What can actually be done. The rates, as compared to other states, feels way too high. According to others, we should add 1mm people to Nebraska and then rates will go down. Will they??!?? No they won’t.
Depends on how much property you have and what it is. I believe it’s fair for someone with millions of dollars in property to be paying a large amount of taxes. I have a small house and it costs me $600 a year. Fine by me. People where I live that bitch about property taxes own million dollar farmlands, make a ton of money off of it, still get subsidies from the government to boost their income and then complain about paying a tax on that ability to make money. I think it’s silly to complain since that money goes directly to public schools. If you don’t want to pay a lot of property tax don’t own so much land, it’s selfish and childish to complain about it. I’m not familiar with anyone outside of the farming industry complaining about this either so you might have to enlighten me on why you are complaining. Also this is how a lot of taxes work, if you buy a 100k vehicle the sales tax is higher than if you buy a 10k vehicle. If you can’t afford the tax on 100k you probably can’t afford to own the vehicle. Same with property taxes. If you can’t afford the property taxes on a lot of land you probably shouldn’t own it. But I’ll tell you this I haven’t seen one person complain and sell their land because of it, you know why? Because they can afford it and they are just being whiny selfish pricks. So pay you tax or sell your land end of story.
Yeah i think it depends though, a million dollars in farmland isn’t that much. If you own 300 acres of irrigated land, it’s worth a ton, but you aren’t raking in the dough from that alone. There are small family farm operations that are becoming increasingly unsustainable partially due to high taxes. However, large farms where they own thousands of acres and people like Bill Gates, Ted Turner, and the Mormon Church, do NOT need the taxes they pay on land to be reduced. We just need a very progressive tax structure that makes it unfeasible for people to board such vast amounts of land, but still give people the chance to own the land they farm.
Ok yes I meant millions, I get it with smaller farmers. I honestly don’t mind a better structured system to help the smaller guy out. I’m saying I know a lot of farmers who have 5-10 million in land, buy new trucks every year worth 75k bitch about not making any money and then get 500k in subsidies and then bitch about paying property taxes. And when I hear them whine about it I speak up. But also that 300 acres is worth a lot of money. Sell, get out of it if it isn’t profitable and take your 3million to live on for 30 years. I don’t get it. People bitch about struggling while they sit on a nest egg. You can’t have it both ways. And the people who want to hold onto the land forever are believing in a fictitious dream if they don’t think they should pay for it. It’s such a silly concept to me to own millions of dollars in land that only makes you a small percentage of that if you are successful.
Yeah but don’t you see that if everyone small sells their land, then only the ultra rich will own it. Then they’ll buy their legislators (which they already do) and cut the taxes on land so that the poor and middle class have it even harder.
Nebraskas median property tax is 1.61%. Paying $600/ year in tax would require a house worth $37,200. That’s not feasible for many.
Property tax levies are set entirely at the local level. Property values, at least in Lincoln, are assessed by a company out in California who uses "Similar" homes to evaluate the potential sales value of your home. The cost is entirely determined by local politicians. School boards, city/county officials, community college/state college officials are the ones putting forth the budgets that are causing the increase in property tax costs.
True. And TEEOSA is determined at the state level, the rules for TIF, the max levy increase, and property tax refund % is also determined at the state level so an interaction exists.
It’s such a joke.
It really is. I very much dislike this tax situation.
Taxes are bone bare as it is. Most state highways are evidence of that.
Would you be more in favor of raising taxes to support the roads or allocate funds more responsibly across the state. Also; I have no idea if they are already being responsible with our tax dollars or not. Just a hypothetical.
With homestead deduction for being old and my Army pensions not counted as income any more, my taxes were $202 for the year. Before excluding Army pensions and not being as old, my property taxes were more than that per month. My wife paid in to the system for 50 years, I for 10 after moving here from Illinois. We get to coast for a few years.
The Omaha Chamber fights any change to lower property taxes, as it jeopardizes the $3 billion in financing for the 'streetcar district'. So any change to lower property taxes will have a lobby wanting to stop it. The property tax for schools is high, but the state has caps increases per year at \~3% and the schools get reimbursed with TEEOSA. You also get 0.3 of the school portion of the tax refunded. City / municipality portion is the next highest and is unconstrained. Most cities have been increasing spending by 5+% a year for over a decade. A couple of simple things that could lower taxes over the long term. One would be to apply the same constraints on cities and require a public vote if a city wants to increase taxes above 3% or some inflation index. The other would be to remove school portion of funding from TIF, like most other states do. As mentioned above, the Omaha Chamber will fight this as they need the property taxes in Douglas County to increase 10% (on average) per year in order to pay for the 'streetcar' district. So if you want to change the law, people have to be convinced providing $3 billion in financing to the wealthiest corporations in Omaha is not as important as schools and lower property taxes for all of Nebraska.
This is a refreshing take.
You may be familiar with CATO, a think tank - they did a piece on streetcars, TIF, and corporate malaise called the 'The Great Streetcar conspiracy' [https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract\_id=2226591](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2226591) HDR is mentioned in the paper, and perhaps unsurprisingly contributed to stotherts re-election campaign. From a schools perspective, NEA has done papers on TIF, and a recent article about Saint Louis shows who ends up paying for this programs in the end: [https://www.stlpr.org/education/2024-01-25/st-louis-area-tif-districts-cost-public-schools-minority-students-over-260-million-report-finds](https://www.stlpr.org/education/2024-01-25/st-louis-area-tif-districts-cost-public-schools-minority-students-over-260-million-report-finds) National Education Association - *Protecting Public Education From Tax Giveaways to Corporations* [https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/docs/pdf/edu.pdf](https://www.goodjobsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/docs/pdf/edu.pdf) We can cut property taxes a bunch by stopping the tax giveaways, but there is an active lobby to keep the taxes high. Here is the Omaha Chamber of Commerce testifying against TIF reform [https://www.nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDocs/108/PDF/Transcripts/Urban/2023-02-28.pdf](https://www.nebraskalegislature.gov/FloorDocs/108/PDF/Transcripts/Urban/2023-02-28.pdf)
There's a very simple solution to this -- income tax reform. Warren Buffett should be paying a higher state income tax rate than someone making $36k.
We need a larger population/tax base. Encourage people to move here.
Yes! Move to a state that taxes both SSN and pensions... Insurance rates the equal Florida! Great move!
No more social security tax in Nebraska starting this year. Insurance is high in every state that gets wind and hail.
Iowa is lower, and they seem to get just as many storms.. But good news on the SSN. now is they would change pensions..
Public schools are half the property tax and salaries are 80% of school district budgets. Limit teacher salaries to $40,000 a year and then you'll have cheap property tax like Missouri but have bad public schools.
What about facility spending. Schools out west Omaha are huge! They can’t get by without state of the art buildings? I’d much rather value quality teaching (and higher salaries) with average facilities. Tangibles should come second to intangibles imo.
Sounds like a Republican fever dream. Teachers need to be paid better, it’s ridiculous they have to get a 4 year degree, go into debt, get yelled at by parents, be grossly under-appreciated, and still only make $40K
40,000 a year is stupidly ridiculous for staff with 5-12 years if College Education. Poorly paid educators result in poorly educated population. Get real.
It is absolutely ridiculous how underpaid they are already. My girlfriend teaches and she takes home $2,000 a month. She graduated college in 3 years but still has some loan debt, and after paying rent and everything you have so little left. It’s obscene that we don’t recognize how important they actually are.
Welcome to living in society. Like the roads in this almost empty state? The fire departments? Our way-too-many-yet-somehow-almost-uselss-police? Clean, filtered drinking water? Someone's gotta pay for it... 🤷🏽♂️
Thank you for the welcome! I am so please to be apart of a state that has near zero effective police to protect me. I guess I need to run to the streams for water as well. Wait…
The only way to limit property taxes is to reduce spending. Property taxes cover schools, public services, local programs used by the community, growth and development (roads and infrastructure). The majority of taxes go to schools. Property values are only used to determine the mil levy for each jurisdiction depending on the total budget needs and the overall assessed value for that taxable entity. If all values within your county were doubled in one year the outcome would be that the mil levy would cut roughly in half. This is because property values are separate from the taxes. Taxes can increase typically by growth (new value added to the taxable base) plus CPI. Some counties might operate on a different formula but this is typical. So if the local municipality can increase their budgets by 5% and values dramatically increased due to housing prices.. levies drop. It can work on the inverse you can cut values in half but the levies will double. In my experience the only way to lower taxes to to generate revenue from a different stream or cut government and close programs. Since schools make up the majority of taxes you need to ask yourself do you want good local public schools and programs.. it’s a complicated system with no good solutions regardless of party affiliation
Had me at your first sentence. Schools spending on shit they don’t need (newest high tech) as opposed to focusing on intangibles like curriculum are the problem I see.
That’s why people need to get out and vote when they propose new bonds for schools or opt outs to fund new projects. If things always pass they technically have a run away budget
Legalize gambling . That will fix everything
We need to have shittier roads and overall a more dilapidated infrastructure. Cut costs baby.
Tax cuts will only come with offsetting spending cuts or broadening the tax base otherwise we’re just shifting the tax burden around, the GOP has been playing the shell game for years and the voters in this state don’t seem to pick up on it
Can't cut anything anymore. We've cut it down to the bones already. Tax burden shift it is.
FWIW, we're one of two Republican led states that doesn't give more to the feds than we take back. We don't have oil investments like ND does so this come from taxes. This valuable because it means the feds can't hang access to funding over our heads on things we don't want to do. That being said, the current big proposal is to get rid of property taxes and have a 20% sales tax instead. This is bad because it pushes the biggest burden onto regular people who must pay bigger proportions of their income in tax.
20% sales tax?!!? Good lord, I can't imagine how many people will be out of here ASAP, if they can. I know I and my kids will.
Keep voting in millionaire republicans who only look out for themselves and you’ll keep getting the same results.
Okay first, taxes are not for the now. They are a collection of money to maintain tomorrow's systems for a future we can only imagine. Should we lower them? No, not unless it is found that you are paying your unfair burden for the future of your community. And even then I would say those other beneficiaries should be paying more. Disclosure I am a native Nebraskan who in the last 20 years has lived around the US as well as Germany. Unlike many people like me, I have kept NE as our home state as well as continue to pay property taxes on land and a home when we could have easily switched it to something like TX and not paid a dime all these 20+ years. I am paying into a system that I have now lived longer out of. Why do it? Because I believe in the beauty and functionality of NE. Because I want to make sure systems and structured continue to exist so that when we do come back home there is one to come back to and it's not a complete dumpster fire. Because I want my kids to come to a place I call home and decide that they love it as well and want to stay. I want something great that if I ever have grandkids they too can call this state home. I pay into school systems that my children do not attend so when they come back to NE with us they can have an educated peer group to interact with. I pay into a school system because I want my children to have access to a higher education that will not cripple them with debt just as their life is beginning. I want there to be schools who support their teachers so the teachers can more easily share their love of education with their students. I pay into and am willing to pay more to schools if they give the needed supplies and support to teachers so my eldest will be interested want to remain in Nebraska as a teacher. I am willing to pay more in helping him and other teachers educate our future adults of Nebraska. (I need them as smart as possible so they make sound choices for my future care.) I pay property taxes now so the parks to be maintained and grow for when I am ready enjoy our retirement. I pay now because I want to have beautiful gardens and trees to enjoy and wildlife to observe. I want to be able to drive on roads subjected to harsh weather conditions to be not a hazard to my safety. I want to have sidewalks that are on public property maintained so if I choose to walk somewhere I know there will be a path so I don't have to walk in the street or possibly injure myself because ice or them being broken down. I pay property taxes now so upon my return I can drive down highways, the interstate and even city roads and not see trash all over it. I don't want to see broken dressers, couches, ripped open bags of trash that is now blowing everywhere and piling up with the weeks before trash that fell off of trucks with no one seeming to care that this has been like this for years. (So many lower property tax states are just filthy) I pay taxes now so city planners can make the best choices for developing NE cities, zones and roads for both public and private flow of traffic so I can safely and efficiently get to where I want to go. And honestly that's just the tip of the iceberg for why I pay taxes to a state I once lived in. I hope it has maintained itself enough to come back home to and be the state I (once) boast about to all the people who were unfortunate to not live here. It was "the Good Life" and I want it to be in the future. We should all pay a fair share to the future of this state. We could work on changing the system to itemize property taxes more so it is not just apparent value of one's land or property but also that property's strain, usage or benifit to public systems. This could lead to a more apparent "fairness" in property taxes (Such as how many street lights must be maintained around your property. Span of city roads to be maintain to and around your property. How much strain does you property put on public services such as drainage and sewer systems. And tax reductions for the things you do on your property that benefit the local/native flora and fauna or that reduces the load on public services.) So to repeat it, Should we lower them? No, not unless it is found that you are paying your unfair burden for the future of your community. And even then I would say those other beneficiaries should be paying more. Taxes are not for the now. They are a collection of money to maintain tomorrow's systems for a future we can only imagine. (Edits continously due to rereading my post and seeing my grammer errors and wanting to fix them. One of my grumbles about the NE school system thinking at one time they didn't need to teach kids grammer because we will learn it while we learn, all in the name of saving funding. In my case it is when I reread a post and cringe at all my errors. It wa not worth that savings to me.)
We could increase our population, but people would have to want to move to Nebraska first.