Many towns with higher property taxes lack other revenue sources, such as businesses or corporate headquarters, said Marc Pfeiffer, a senior policy fellow at Rutgers University’s Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, who studies local government in New Jersey.
Topic
property taxes
Pfeiffer: Why do property taxes vary so widely among NJ towns so close to each other
New Jersey’s property taxes are expensive — no doubt about it. New Jersey in 2023 had an effective tax rate of 1.77%, behind only Illinois, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, a Washington-based think tank. The Tax Foundation defines this rate as “the average...
Rising Costs of Homeownership in New Jersey
In a new brief from the Rutgers Center on Law, Inequality, and Metropolitian Equity (CLiME), Assistant Director of Housing Studies Katie Nelson PhD ’22 and student research assistant Miranda Alpertstein MCRP ’25 explore the sky-high and rapidly rising costs of being a homeowner in New Jersey. This includes both mortgage and non-mortgage housing costs.
Which North Jersey town is most expensive? Highest average property tax in Bergen, Passaic
But shared services often yield savings only on a case-by-case basis at the local level rather than statewide, said Rutgers’ Pfeiffer, while Ciattarelli’s proposal for an alternating property tax rate could run afoul of the state constitution.
“You can’t give some people a lower rate than other people,” Pfeiffer said. “You have to assess everybody at the same standard.”
New Jersey has contributed more than $800M in funding to Atlantic City for budgets since 2016
“In New Jersey, we have a single way of raising money, which is property taxes,” Pfeiffer said of municipal budgets. “Atlantic City has always been an exception to that because you have the hotels and then the casinos. You’ve always had a policy of state engagement to support Atlantic City’s municipal budget in particular.”
Can anyone lower New Jersey’s property taxes? What the candidates for governor are saying
Murphy’s Republican predecessor, Chris Christie, worked with Democrats in the Legislature a decade ago to put a 2% annual cap on property tax increases, with some exceptions. The effects of that cap have been clear with slower growth under Murphy, said Marc Pfeiffer,...