KnightNight

I’m all for a rising tide lifting all boats situation. I mean 50 a week is incredible. It’s a crazy time now and the pessimist in me is saying to enjoy it while it lasts

worstpilotever

warm. Interesting take on the weather in houston.
no state income tax. Where does the money for infrastructure come from? I would rather pay income tax than high property tax, when you stop working your taxes go down. With high property taxes they do not, but your income and the ability to pay those taxes has diminished.
one airport. I have heard horror stories of how long it takes to get from employee parking to the terminal, might as well be two airports.

ZeroTT

Hotter than two rats humping in a wool sock would be another description

BobbyLeeSwagger

Thanks for that image

Buck Rogers

A little bit of devil's advocate here. If you live in California, the state income tax rate is up to 13% on every dollar you make. you make 300K you get to pay almost $40K in state income tax(and Obamacare tax)....plus sales tax and federal income tax and union dues, and .....PROPERTY TAX. The sum taxes are greater than 50% of income...but I digress. A really nice home in the burbs of Houston, on a golf course, 3500sq ft...might cost 600k with an "infrastructure tax"( property tax) of 10K/yr. What would an equal house cost in LAX or SFO? If you could find said house for 600K you would still pay almost 5K/yr in property tax. If it is all about the Benjamin's, you could always move to say Florida or Arizona(or a whole host of other low tax states) upon retirement and reap lower taxes.

There may be a lot of reasons to not live in HOU, but property tax isn't one of them when viewed in the context of housing prices and state income tax and income Each state will exist on a Benjamin continuum, with Texas being at the lower end tax wise if one wishes to live in domicile. California and New York on the other end.

JMHO

GoCats67

Please define "absolutely insane property taxes"

Not saying they aren't, I just don't know where your comparison is from.

I live in the suburbs of Chicago and I pay a little over 12K for my 600,000 dollar house. So a mil rate of about 2. That is insane in my book, but it is actually considerably less than some of the other areas around Chicago.

SquawkIdent

I don't think that's the way taxes work, it's not the highest marginal tax rate on every dollar you earn. You'd get to the 12.3% bracket if you went over $625,000. Someone filing single and making $300k and having no deductions at all would pay more like 24-25k and be around 8% effective tax rate. Homeowners can deduct their mortgage interest on loans up to 1M IIRC so that would lower their effective tax rate below 8%. Still no bargain compared to TX, FL, NV, etc., but nowhere near 40k for the average taxpayer.

HighMinsChief

so lax isn't an option?

Back2future

I was about to post the same thing. Here's a cool calculator that will do any state with income tax:
https://goodcalculators.com/us-salary-tax-calculator/

CALFO

pro: no Houston layovers

con: you live in houston