Five years ago, back in 2010, Gov. Christie won a political battle, enacting a 2 percent cap on municipal tax levies. The law limited property-taxing budget increases to a maximum of 2 percent — with some exceptions — down from 4 percent, lest they be subject to public vote.
While some argued at the time whether the cap would work, or whether it was another political ploy, the data says it has had a positive effect.
Since the cap was enacted, property taxes rose 2.4 percent on average in 2011, 1.6 percent in 2012, 1.3 percent in 2013 and 2.2 percent in 2014. From 2004 to 2006, property taxes increased at least 7 percent each year.
That’s data we can stand behind, but now, five years after the cap’s enaction, more needs to be done. It’s not simply good enough that property tax increases have leveled off; we need to find a way to reduce the property tax burden on our residents.
While the increase last year was only 2.2 percent, New Jersey’s average property tax bill rose to the highest its ever been — to $8,161 on average, according to Department of Community Affairs data. The average property taxpayer paid an additional $173 in property taxes last year, up from an average total of $7,988 in 2013.
Here’s some more ugly data…
• Only 0.2 percent of homeowners in the U.S. paid more than $8,000 last year in property taxes — which is lower than our state average.
• New Jersey collects $3,000 per capita in property taxes. Seventy-nine percent of American homeowners paid less than $1,750 last year, and only 3 percent paid more than $4,000.
Christie’s property-tax cap was never going to fix the problem of New Jersey’s high property taxes; it wasn’t designed to do so. It has helped keep local taxing entities in check, but that’s only a start.
Step 2 of property tax reform should be initiatives to lower property taxes. Some of these are in place, such as incentives to bring new business to the state’s barren wastelands such as Trenton and Camden.
But that is not enough. We need to bring more business and more jobs to this state, more ratables for our towns and school districts to offset the taxes these entities need to operate. Taxes aren’t going up too much, and that’s good, but now they need to start going down.
