If you own property in Schenectady, you have the highest total tax rate in the Capital Region, but if you live next door in Niskayuna, you’ll have the region’s highest tax bill.

In the city, the total tax rate — city, county and school taxes combined — is $51.50 per $1,000 full value. The median home value is $112,900, meaning the total annual median tax bill in 2017 was $5,814, which is nowhere near the highest combined tax bill in the region. By that measure, the city isn’t even in the top 20.

When it comes to what people actually pay each year, Niskayuna tops the list. The total tax rate there is only $32.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value, but the median home value is $260,900, so that rate yields the Capital Region’s highest median tax bill: $8,480. That’s for homes in the Niskayuna Central School District; for Niskayuna homes in the South Colonie district, the median bill is $8,054.

The tax details were contained in a report released Monday by the fiscally conservative Empire Center for Public Policy, which compared taxes in communities across New York, using data from the state comptroller’s office.

“The ‘all-in’ property tax bill is often a key factor in locational decisions by individuals and businesses,” said the center’s executive director, Timothy Hoefer, in an introduction. “In addition, the tax data point to an inverse relationship between effective tax rates and property values, with high effective rates often correlating to low median home values.”

In many suburban communities in the Capital Region, school district taxes are two-thirds or more of residents’ annual taxes — something city, town and village officials frequently point out when they hear tax complaints.

In Niskayuna, the school rate was $19.97 per $1,000 of assessed property value. The county rate was $7.67 and the town rate was $4.86, for a total rate of $32.50, according to the report.

Niskayuna Central School District spokesman Matt Leon said the district hasn’t had a chance to analyze the report, but he noted that over the past five years the district’s annual school tax levy increase averaged less than 1.5 percent.

“We will keep working to control costs whenever possible, while keeping the quality of education high and delivering a strong return on investment for our schools,” Leon said.

The Empire Center issues the report periodically, and having the highest combined tax rate is a position Schenectady has been in before.

Of the $51.50 tax rate, the Empire Center said $27.71 was for schools, $16.12 for the city, and $7.67  for Schenectady County.

Schenectady schools Superintendent Larry Spring has repeatedly argued the City School District is shortchanged on state aid, forcing the low-wealth district to have high property taxes. Mayor Gary McCarthy has made similar arguments about the city’s finances.

Hoefer said the new report and online analysis tool allow people to compare their communities to others of similar size or demographics so they can ask questions about why one has higher property taxes than another.

“For me, it’s a tool for you, the taxpayer, to ask what drives the spending,” Hoefer said.

In median effective tax rates in the Capital Region, the second-highest rate after Schenectady’s $51.50 per $1,000 was the village of Scotia, which came in at $43.63, with a median home value of $137,400. That yields a median tax bill of $5,995. Rotterdam ranked fifth, with a median tax rate of $40.77 and a median tax bill of $6,785.

In the Mohawk Valley, the village of Fort Plain in western Montgomery County ranked third, with an effective rate of $51.85. The median home value there is $67,500, meaning the median tax bill is $3,500. In fourth place was Gloversville, with a median rate of $51.38 and median home value of $76,500. That means the median tax bill in Gloversville was $3,931.

The report notes that New York in general has some of the highest property taxes in the country, and it also highlights how much property taxes vary by region. New York City and Nassau counties were excluded from the list because they impose different tax rates depending on the class of property.

In the Long Island village of Lloyd Harbor, the median home value is nearly $1.4 million, and the median bill was $39,508 last year — the highest annual bills in the state. In Tuxedo Park in Orange County the median bill was $34,808. Tax bills of $24,000 or higher are also common in Westchester County.

The report also ranks the places with the lowest effective tax rates. The best place to live in the Capital Region, by that measure alone, is the tiny Great Sacandaga Lake community of Edinburg in Saratoga County, where a median $224,400 home value and a $9.01 tax rate mean the median tax bill was just $2,022.

Tags:

You may also like

It’s never simple arithmetic with schools

Earlier this week, the Empire Center did its own report on the plummeting numbers when it comes to students. Overall, the 2019-20 enrollment is at its lowest levels in New York state in the last 30 years. Read More

School budgets: Find out how much your property taxes may increase

Schools, excluding the Big 5 districts of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Yonkers and New York City, are proposing to increase taxes by $539 million despite an enrollment drop of 7,827 students, or a 0.5% decline, the Empire Center for State Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank said. Read More

Region’s homeowners among hardest hit by taxes in state

Those findings were based on data compiled and supplied by the Empire Center for Public Policy in Albany, which gathers and adds tax rates for every county, municipality and school district to show the combined toll of school and government taxes for any place in the state, adjusted to smooth differences in assessment levels and allow comparisons. Read More

Property taxes: These places pay the most in New York

The report, released by the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank in Albany, found the effective tax rate for each region of the state. Calculating tax rates can be tricky, particularly in New York, where property owners face various taxes from multiple jurisdictions, including counties, towns and cities, as well as schools. Read More

Schenectady, Niskayuna top property tax lists for Capital Region

Schenectady’s property tax rate is $48.20 per $1,000 of home value, according to the Benchmarking New York report produced by the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank based in Albany. Read More

Orleans County communities had five of the 10 highest tax rates in Finger Lakes for 2018, Empire Center report says

ALBANY — Orleans County communities have five of the top 10 highest tax rates for 2018, according to the Empire Center’s annual Benchmarking NY rankings, released this week. Read More

Bellone seeks SALT end-run, critics say issue settled

Although the IRS ruling hasn’t formally been made final yet and Bellone is promising a legal fight, E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center, an anti-tax think tank, said Suffolk taxpayers should be skeptical of putting money into the proposed charitable fund. “Any contribution to something like the Suffolk County fund is by no means guaranteed a tax deduction, so the message to taxpayers is don’t count on it,” McMahon said in an email. He called Bellone’s plan “nothing new — basically a Suffolk echo of Cuomo a year ago.” Read More

New York can do far more to lower property tax burden

A recent report by the Empire Center, an Albany-based, fiscally conservative think tank, projects if the state paid for the counties’ share of Medicaid costs, it would provide $8 billion in relief to county governments. That’s an average 27 percent reduction in county taxes, the USA Today Network’s Albany bureau reports. Read More