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1 Gerald Prante, New Census Data Shows Where Property Taxes Hit Homeowners Hardest 1 (2007)

handle is hein.taxfoundation/ffbadxz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: TAX7 FOUNDATION New Census Data Shows Where Property Taxes Hit Homeowners Hardest Fiscal Fact No. 103 September 12, 2007 by Gerald Prante The Census Bureau has released new housing numbers courtesy of the 2006 American Community Survey (ACS), which includes real estate taxes paid on owner-occupied housing units. Data is included for many geographical units, including states and high-population counties. 2 The Tax Foundation has long published historical data on property tax collections compiled by the Census Bureau's Government Finances division (see http://www.census.gov/govs/www/index.html). However, such data includes not only taxes paid by individual homeowners, but also property taxes paid by businesses, as well as some special types of property pertaining to minerals or fuels found mostly in a handful of states, such as Texas, Wyoming and Alaska. When people want to know where property taxes are the highest, though, they typically wonder about property taxes levied specifically on homeowners. This is where the ACS data is useful. The ACS relies on survey data collected from households, just as the Census collects most of its information. The survey data collected in the ACS, as well as in other Census household surveys such as the Current Population Survey (CPS), is used in many government functions, such as decisions on how to distribute spending geographically and the calculation of the official poverty estimates and labor market statistics, among others. In fact, the real estate taxes data featured here is actually used by some government agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, in determining spending. Furthermore, survey data drawn from households by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is used to determine cost-of-living adjustments to the billions of dollars that are spent each year in Social Security, as well as military pay. Therefore, arguments that this ACS data is unreliable because it is based on inaccurate household survey data would be an argument against almost the entire federal government's appropriation methodology, especially the $300 billion that is appropriated annually using ACS data. In other words, the data is solid. For a chart of real estate taxes paid on owner-occupied housing for each of the 783 high-population counties (65,000 or greater)3 for 2006, see the Tax Foundation Web site: http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/1888.html. The rankings have changed little from last year's, where the Northeast, specifically New York and New Jersey, dominated the highest-taxed

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