When the New Hampshire media reports on our state’s reliance on property taxes you always hear how they are “some of the highest in the nation.” It’s true. Why don’t these same media outlets note, in the same breath, that this might be why our total tax burden is one of the lowest in the nation?
Related: Budget Compromise Proves NH Democrats Want Economy To Tank so They Can Raise Taxes.
New Hampshire consistently ranks as a state with one of the lowest total tax burdens in the nation. How hard is that to say?
New Hampshire Business Review dropped 477 words on how high our property taxes are compared to other states but did not have room to mention our consistently low total tax burden.
New Hampshire’s lack of a general sales or income tax may make the state a tax haven in the eyes of many – but when it comes to property taxes, that’s another story, since Granite Staters pay the third-highest property tax bill in the nation.
Not in the opening paragraph; of course, that would kill your lede. So, they get a bit of buy-in on how “this is a thing,” then point out that this is not a new thing and that our home prices are high as well. This results in an effective tax rate of 2.2% on homeowners (rising steadily since 2015). Is that bad?
This year, only New Jersey (2.5%) and Illinois (2.3%) have a higher effective rate. Those in Hawaii pay only 0.3%, followed by Alabama with 0.4%. Connecticut – with a 2.1% rate – is almost as high as New Hampshire. Property tax rates the other New England states were: Vermont, 1.9%; Rhode Island, 1.7%; Maine, 1.4% and Massachusetts, 1.2%.
They include some necessary points about how the data is not all-inclusive and how some states tax commercial property differently. So, the picture is fuzzy. But there’s an emphasis on high housing prices and high property taxes, so we’ll run with that. It feeds a convenient co-joined left-wing narrative. We need workforce housing ‘cuz housing is expensive. And, homes are a human right or something. But they are not. Neither are elective surgeries like abortion or gender reassignment, but for some strange reason, our taxes are being used to pay for those raising our total tax burden.
The total tax burden includes property taxes and every other tax you can imagine—the real cost of the burden of government.
So, how do these same states compare to ours for their Total Tax burden? Wallet Hub was the source for the NHBR article, so we’ll use Wallet HUB’s total tax burden data to compare and the list of states in the pull quote from the NHBR article above.
- New Hampshire 6.86%
- Alabama 7.28%
- Massachusetts 8.9%
- Illinois 9.67%
- Connecticut 9.7%
- New Jersey 9.86%
- Rhode Island 10.2%
- Maine 10.84%
- Vermont 10.77%
- Hawaii 12.97%
New Hampshire has the lowest total tax burden in all of New England. And Hawaii, touted as having one of the lowest “property tax” burdens, is approaching double New Hampshire’s total tax burden.
So, you can actually buy and maintain a lot more house or less house and more of other things, including paying for your own abortion or sex reassignment surgery if that’s how you roll, with the anticipation of continuing to save because your total New Hampshire tax burden is, year after year, one of the lowest in the nation.
A situation that I have long argued is because we rely more on property taxes. That is to say, if you write a story about high property taxes in the Granite State, it is useful to note why that’s not a bad thing or why adding new taxes won’t make them any better – just look at New Jersey.
