Residents of the Onondaga County village of Solvay had the highest effective property tax rate in the Central New York, paying $57.80 per $1,000 of home value during 2014, according to the newest edition of Benchmarking NY, the Empire Center’s annual examination of local property taxes.
“There’s no question that New Yorkers pay some of the highest property taxes in the country, but the burden can vary widely even among neighboring jurisdictions,” said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center. “By making it easier to compare taxes in different localities, we hope to encourage local taxpayers and elected officials to search for ways of reducing taxes and spending.”
The lowest effective tax rate in the Central New York was $17.35 per $1,000, levied on homes and businesses in the Cayuga County town of Ledyard falling within the Southern Cayuga school district.
In terms of tax bills on the median-value home in a community, those in Skaneateles within the Jordan-Elbridge school district had the region’s highest, at $10,028. The lowest tax bills on a median-value home, $1,872, was found in the Madison County town of Brookfield within the Edmeston school district.
Users can see the components of their local property taxes and compare property taxes in multiple communities using the Empire Center’s Property Tax Calculator, a tool on SeeThroughNY.net, the Center’s transparency website.
Benchmarking NY uses data from the Office of the State Comptroller to calculate effective tax rates–combined county, municipal and school taxes as a percent of market value–for thousands of localities across the state during 2014, excluding only New York City and Nassau County. The complete report, posted here, includes a list of the top and bottom 20 effective tax rates and the top and bottom 20 tax bills on a locality’s median-value home in each of nine regions.
The Empire Center, based in Albany, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to promoting policies to make New York a better place to live, work and do business.
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