Property Tax Exemption
A homestead exemption is most often only on a fixed monetary amount, such as the first 50,000 dollars of the assessed value. The remainder is taxed at the normal rate. In this case, a home valued at 150,000 would then only be taxed on 100,000; a home valued at 75,000 would only be taxed on 25,000.
The exemption is generally intended to make the property tax a progressive tax. In some places, the exemption is paid for with a local or state (or equivalent unit) sales tax.
The homestead exemption sales tax (HEST) in some places has been criticized for not exempting groceries, thus the poor end up paying some of their food money to subsidize those who can already afford their own homes. Since the poor typically rent, neither they nor their landlords get an exemption.
Read more about this topic: Homestead Exemption
Famous quotes containing the words property, tax and/or exemption:
“A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 15:13.
“In 1845 he built himself a small framed house on the shores of Walden Pond, and lived there two years alone, a life of labor and study. This action was quite native and fit for him. No one who knew him would tax him with affectation. He was more unlike his neighbors in his thought than in his action. As soon as he had exhausted himself that advantages of his solitude, he abandoned it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public.... And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speechmaking. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)