Notice of Valuation

Received our property tax statement for this year and the estimated valuation for next year...
The value of our house:

2011 - 390k
2012 - 380k
2013 - 330k (est.)

Our taxes went up a bit in 2012, even though the value when down a bit.  I am sure hoping that we see a big reduction in 2013 though.  Pretty insane what the value of our home has done.  When it was appraised for the initial loan it was worth 540k (the appraisal).  When we refinanced in October it appraised for 430k; that hurt because we had to pay 60k to stay under 80%.

Oh well, it is in our best interest for the value to go down, because we have no plans to sell it for many, many years and our taxes should go down with the value.  Only negative is that we would like to get a HELOC so that we can do some improvements.

MNPR Yeah

Received our MN Property Tax rebate.  $940 on a tax bill of just under $5000.  That is pretty nice, does that mean that we didn't make a lot of money for the tax that we pay on our house (I think so...).

Anyways it is very nice, too bad they did away with it in the new state budget (I think I heard that).

Historical Tax Rates

I was curious what the top marginal tax rates have been for the last century.  As you can see the last time we had rates this low it preceded the Great Depression.

There is a lot of interesting information on that tax policy website, unfortunately it could be organized quite a bit better.  The Times has an article by Paul Krugman explaining that corporation have ample cash right now, but the problem is a lack of consumers.  You can't trickle down to a not existent middle class.

Huh, Tax refund?

We received a check from the state for $179, so apparently I didn't do our taxes correctly and they were able to figure out where I went wrong and send us a check.  I guess I would expect that, but it is still surprising.

Once I figure out my mistake I will update.