I saw an article in the newspaper yesterday comparing property taxes across the USA. The low was either Louisiana or Mississippi, at about $170 per year median, the highest was NJ with the median over $6000. Quite a difference.
I don't even know how $170 per year could be possible unless they're getting significant money from the state for schools, or they use local sales taxes or something like that. I'm assuming they're not leaving out some separate "school tax" which some places list separately. It's still a tax on the value of your property, so it's no different from property taxes. Where I live we just have a single property tax that includes the schools.
The average cost per student for public schools is, IIRC, somewhere in the vicinity of $7000 per year. It would take a lot of childless households to cover one child's expenses at $170 per house. There has to be another source of revenue. NJ's cost per student is higher than the national average, in the $8000-9000 range. Mississippi is known for its terrible schools, and NJ's schools are very good.
It's actually not our good schools that cost so much though, it's the bad schools. The poor, urban school districts are costing more like $12k per year per student with worse results. That's not surprising, you can't get good results from people who don't care about preparing themselves for success and whose parents are indifferent.
Every state gets its revenues from multiple sources. You have to look at the big picture - the total tax burden.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/335.html NJ is still at the top of the list, not surprisingly.
NJ's total state and local tax burden is 11.8% of per capita income of
$56k, or $6610 per year.
Mississippi's total state and local tax burden is 8.9% of per capita income of
$32k, or $2834 per year.
Don't be surprised if the mass exodus of New Jerseyans to Mississippi never materializes.
😉
