Blog of Chris

After spending hours on hold and asking simple questions to rude city employees, I have come to realize a very, very important part of the homestead tax credit calculations.  This comes after receiving my 5th property tax levy since becoming a homeowner, with a bill that is 387% more than it was in 2004.  That’s right, my property tax has nearly quadrupled over the last 4 years!  I wasn’t too thrilled at owing a lump sum of $4600 dollars to the city, and so I triple checked to see if they had applied the right amount of credit.

As it turns out, you can’t apply this year’s credit without last year’s credit in place, and you can’t apply last year’s until you calculate the prior year’s!  This means since they never gave me the credit in 2005 like they were supposed to, I have been paying way too much every year since then.

Basically, because my home was assessed at such a low value when I purchased it, I am supposed to be protected from huge increases as long as I own and live in the home.  The next person who buys it will get a nice first tax bill of over 6 thousand dollars.  That little tidbit should also make it fun to sell this house.

This is the difference between a 387% increase in taxes (to match the assessment exactly), to an 18% increase from 2004 to 2008.  I have overpaid about $4000.00 since then, and the bill for this year will end up being about 30% of the original amount if they fix it properly.

That’s a pretty big if, as we all know trying to get this kind of thing fixed is like pulling teeth.  It took years to get them to change the property to my principal residence in whatever database they use, so trying to get them to refund thousands of dollars should be a hoot.

For anyone who ends up googling this to calculate their own homestead tax credit, here is an example table with details about how to calculate the credit.

The assessment value is given to you by the state.  They reassess your property every 3 years, and then phase in the new value over the next 3 years.

Taxable assessment is the amount you actually pay tax on.  In the first year it is the same as the assessed value, as you are not eligible for the homestead tax credit until you have lived in the property for over a year.

The city tax is the assessment value multiplied by the tax amount for your jurisdiction.  For Baltimore it is $2.268 per $100 of assessed value.

Adjusted City tax is the same calculation as above, but is based on the “taxable assessment”.  The difference between the City Tax and Adjusted City tax is the amount of the credit.

As you can see, even though the property value increases dramatically, the tax only increases by $70.00 or so each year as the credit amount gets larger.

I don’t know where these buildings magically appear from, but the entire neighborhood of Locust Point has been created in 3d buildings in Google Earth.  I wonder if it is someone’s job somewhere in the world, and if they have even been to my neighborhood, or even Baltimore for that matter.

Whoever it was, mismatched the roofs with the houses on Haubert street, placing my rooftop deck on my next-door neighbor’s house!  I also wonder if this little bit of inaccuracy might somehow lead to a lower assessment of my house and a higher assessment of his.

Here are some snapshots.

This one is of my street, with the neighborhood and the grain elevator in the background.  My house is shown with a light colored roof which actually belongs to the house on the left of mine.  To the right of my house you can see the rooftop deck I built last summer.

This one shows a rooftop deck with all of the deck furniture piled up on one side, a common occurrence after periods of high wind and low deck usage.

There’s a beer pong video game coming out, and it’s been rated as acceptable for 13 year olds.  There are a lot of things wrong with this (besides the fact that they are using 10 cups).  This is on par with the Wii video game where you pretend to pee on things.

I don’t really see how this will keep anyone’s interest for more than 5 minutes… I guess they can change the background and table style, and let your avatar get fatter over time.  They should give you the option to skip class and practice as well.

On a side note, this made CNN this morning, along with the news about racist British toddlers.  Is there still a war going on?

-C

I’ve been working on some power delivery issues with a  Charm City Networks project, which has forced me to pick up a soldering iron and know a little bit about electronics.  In my search for knowledge, I came across this animation of a 555 timer chip being used to alternately light two LEDs.

-C

According to this article, a Government funded Child Development organization in the UK has issued a publication advising day care and childcare professionals to watch for racist behavior in little kids.

This could include a child of as young as three who says “yuk” in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

Wow.  I wonder when we’ll get it here.  Americans would eat this up… and then say “Yuk.”

-C

Dating and relationships, summed up in a few minutes.

http://www.webfilehost.com/images/mainstream-media.php

Here’s a fine example of what’s really newsworthy in today’s world.