I recently came across a web posting by Marilyn Huston on New Hampshire: The Real Facts. The post is titled “New Hampshire's Tax Burden Is Not As High As You May Think”

It contains a report by Daphne A. Kenyon, Ph.D. and Michael E. Bell, Ph.D. titled “Not as High as You Think: New Hampshire’s Property Tax Burden” This is a very good report showing how the traditional measures for comparing property taxes from state to state do not create accurate comparisons and the reasons for this.

It shows that through traditional measures in 2005 New Hampshire has the thrid highest property tax burden at $2,034 per capita and the highest property tax burden as a share of personal income in the nation at $54.11 per $1,000 personal income. You can read and download the actual report in PDF format by clicking the following link.

              Not as High as You Think: New Hampshire's Property Tax Burden

The only critism I have about this report is that it doesn’t take any of the other state taxes paid by the citizens into account, including broad-based taxes in other states. I have read in the papers and heard on the radio at “Meet The New Press” all of the discussion about removing the anti-tax pledge from NH politics.

This initiative is being put forth by a group that wants to institute broad-based taxes on all of us. The latest attack has been by putting warrant articles in about 80 town elections calling for the removal of the pledge.

Their thought is that if the pledge doesn’t exist then politicians wouldn’t be seen as reneging on their word when the tax is instituted.

The main argument for bringing this new tax to life here is that it will greatly reduce our property taxes. This argument requires a belief that the politicians in Concord that don’t pay their bills to the counties, towns and cities now will properly fund local government and schools. I wonder what imaginary world that these people live in.

This report is very good at showing the effective property tax rate for residential property in NH at 13^th to 15^th place out of 50 states. When you take the total burden of all taxes paid it is not hard to figure out that our actual tax burden is among the lightest in the nation.