February 11, 2020
Activities: Administration, Economic Development, Education, Housing / Shelter
Geography:
Demographics:
Annual ROI: 0.0%
Image source: SmartAsset
Are you getting enough bang for your buck? When it comes to paying property taxes, it’s not easy to tell.
SmartAsset analyzed this by comparing how good schools are, how safe the area is, and how high are the property taxes.
They analyzed all 3,000+ counties across the U.S. by a metric called “tax value index.”
Schools are ranked from 10 (the best) to 1 (the worst) according to an average of math and reading performance proficiencies in standardized tests, weighted by number of students. Counties that rate a 10 have schools in the top decile in the state.
Law enforcement is judged according to violent and property crime rates per 100,000 people. According to the FBI, violent crime includes murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Property crime includes things like burglary, motor vehicle theft and arson.
The effective tax rates were derived from national census data: The median amount of tax paid divided by the median home value in each county.
To create the tax value index, the county school rankings have been divided by the total violent and property crime rates per 100,000 people in each county and then that number is divided by the average property tax amount paid per person per year to obtain a number representing public service value per tax dollar. We then multiplied that number by 1,000,000 to form the tax value index. Basically, the greater the number, the more residents get for their tax dollars.
We then ranked all counties with populations greater than 50,000 people to find the top 10 and the bottom 10.
For some comparison, the average US county, with a population of 92,840, charges a 1.13 percent property tax rate for $742.06 in property taxes per capita per year, has schools ranked at 5.53, and sees 101.3 violent crimes and 826.6 property crimes per 100,000 people yearly.
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