October 29, 2009
Wall Street Journal Blog Highlights Tax Foundation Property Tax Report
"Who Pays the Highest Property Taxes? Hint: Yankee Fans Abound"
By Nick Timiraos
If your wallet is feeling a lot lighter after paying the property tax bill, there's a good chance you live in New York or New Jersey, according to the latest federal survey of median property taxes.
Counties in New York and New Jersey can "boast" that they have the highest median property taxes on owner-occupied homes in the country, while Louisiana parishes take the title for having the lowest taxes, according to the Tax Foundation's analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.
The Census presents data in three-year averages with geographic regions of at least 20,000 people to prevent small sample sizes from obscuring the rankings, and the Tax Foundation restricts its analysis just to counties and includes taxes levied by school districts and other taxing authorities.
