Maine comes in at No. 16 on list of states with highest property taxes

(The Center Square) – Property taxes in Maine are among the highest nationwide according to a report released by WalletHub, a personal finance website that compared home and vehicle taxes across the country.

Property taxes pay for the majority of municipal services from police departments to schools.

WalletHub placed Maine at 16th highest in the country in real estate taxes, with a 1.36% real estate tax rate. A homeowner can expect to pay $2,585 on a home with a $190,000 median value.

When states don’t impose other types of taxation such as sales or income taxes, property taxes tend to be high, according to Jill Gonzalez, WalletHub analyst.

“For the communities in these states, property taxes can be a major burden,” she said.

At the national level, more than $14 billion in property taxes go unpaid each year. Gonzalez said that can be due to both high taxation as well as the massive amount of debt that Americans carry.

“For those who live paycheck to paycheck and who rely a lot on credit cards, paying their property taxes is not a priority,” she said. “Other than that, it’s difficult to draw a conclusion, especially since we do not have state level data here.”

WalletHub determined which states had the highest and lowest property taxes by comparing all 50 states and the District of Columbia by using U.S. Census data and by applying assumptions based on national auto sales data for vehicle property taxes.

For real estate property taxes, WalletHub divided the “median real estate tax payment” by the “median home price” in each state, using those rates to get the dollar amount paid as real estate tax on a house worth $127,500, which is the median value for a home as of 2019.

Vehicle property tax rates were calculated based on data for cities and counties with at least 50 percent of a given state’s population, carried to the state level using weighted averages based on population size.

“One thing consumers could do to avoid paying too much in property taxes is asking for a reevaluation of their home,” Gonzalez said. “If you think your home’s value has been assessed too high, you can dispute your property tax. Other than that, there’s not much room for negotiation. If you’re too burdened by your property tax, you could consider moving to a state with a lower rate.”

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