If you had to leave Mass and move north...

[Asaltweapon]

This is 100% true. People should stop coming here and go live in Maine.

We don’t want you here in Maine either.

 

[LittleCalm]

I don't understand what the fuss is all about re: NH property taxes. Ours are 25% of what we paid in MA. And there are no other meaningful taxes. And on top of that, the roads are better and we never lose power. Go figure. Ultimately it comes down to urban and suburban areas -- you're going to get hosed on cost of living in those areas pretty much wherever you go, and the northern NE states simply have smaller urban/suburban footprints so costs are much lower relative to other more populated areas.

 

[ChevyGuy91]

I don't understand what the fuss is all about re: NH property taxes. Ours are 25% of what we paid in MA. And there are no other meaningful taxes. And on top of that, the roads are better and we never lose power. Go figure. Ultimately it comes down to urban and suburban areas -- you're going to get hosed on cost of living in those areas pretty much wherever you go, and the northern NE states simply have smaller urban/suburban footprints so costs are much lower relative to other more populated areas.

Don't explain it. If they are too dense to realize the totality of a tax burden, they are probably the ones we don't want living here.

 

[Mountain]

11k a year? Holy shit mine are $1400 a year in mass. It's a 960 square foot raised ranch......3 bedroom 1 bath. It ain' posh.....its a basically maintained piece of crap ranch.....but it's my piece of crap.....paid it off when I was 46.

Most of my family and friends that bitch about taxes and mortgage rates......their just over stretching their budget on what they bought. I did the opposite.....wife and I both make good money but we kept the tiny ranch home and made big payments on it during my deployments (mil pay is tax exempt when deployed to combat theater) now we have no mortgage and are pumping the savings and 401k. I'm sure if you look at our income we could afford to buy an 800k house and some land etc.....but f*** that. My house is paid for its fine.

11k a month in taxes on a property....I'd have a f***ing stroke lol....my mortgage all those years was only $870 (including escrow taxes) so your tax bill is more than my total payment was.

My plan is to retire at 58 and a half. 8.5 years left. I can use va for my medical till Medicare kicks in......and my mil pension I cam collect at 58.5 years old. Wouldn't be able to do that with a big mortgage and tax bill

$11K per year. Was ~9K about 10 years ago. House value has climbed 50% plus the town is a little more greedy. Maybe if I'd been here forever the assessment would be a bit lower, but we bought new so assessment = sale price. Awesome that you are paying $1400- you must still have a very low assessment and/or live in the town with the lowest rates in MA. We paid ~$1200 in TN on assessed value of a little less than $300K if I recall correctly. Yep, the tax bill is a huge chunk of the monthly payment- we put almost 40% down on the house.

For the folks in the Monadnock region, what are the typical property tax rates? Let's say per $100K? Also does anyone know the potential savings from putting land in common use?

 

[Mountain]

Don't explain it. If they are too dense to realize the totality of a tax burden, they are probably the ones we don't want living here.

In my case, just dreaming of all the money I could save.

 

[garandman]

I don't understand what the fuss is all about re: NH property taxes. Ours are 25% of what we paid in MA. And there are no other meaningful taxes. And on top of that, the roads are better and we never lose power. Go figure. Ultimately it comes down to urban and suburban areas -- you're going to get hosed on cost of living in those areas pretty much wherever you go, and the northern NE states simply have smaller urban/suburban footprints so costs are much lower relative to other more populated areas.

Think you have repeated this several times, but don’t say what town in NH or MA or what the value of the properties are.

Yes, our real estate taxes are less in NH as a dollar amount.

As a percentage of the value of the property, they are 2-1/2 to 3X what we pay in Boston.

A friend has a house in Bedford, NH, which is an affluent town with amenities. He has been paying over $10,000 a year in real estate taxes on a $400,000 house (purchase price) for several years. A friend bought a house in Exeter in 2010 for $200,000: property tax then was $6,000.

There are still small towns in NH off the beaten track with no schools, very low property values, and very low real estate taxes. Definitely worth paying attention to all those factors.

Decision depends whether you are working or retired, need health care, have kids in school or not, want lakes, mountains, skiing, kindergarten, etc.

Fiber optic internet at reasonable cost is spreading, which is great.

 

[whacko]

$11K per year. Was ~9K about 10 years ago. House value has climbed 50% plus the town is a little more greedy. Maybe if I'd been here forever the assessment would be a bit lower, but we bought new so assessment = sale price. Awesome that you are paying $1400- you must still have a very low assessment and/or live in the town with the lowest rates in MA. We paid ~$1200 in TN on assessed value of a little less than $300K if I recall correctly. Yep, the tax bill is a huge chunk of the monthly payment- we put almost 40% down on the house.

For the folks in the Monadnock region, what are the typical property tax rates? Let's say per $100K? Also does anyone know the potential savings from putting land in common use?

I did some calculations and your right.....1400 is low. I forgot about my disabled vet tax credit......that gets me down to 1400. My town is $12.72 per $1000 assessed value.....so I'd be at about $2200 per year without the disabled vet credit. Still dirt cheap.

The property tax thing is what's keeping my wife and I from selling and moving to NH. We could do it and be mortgage free.......but any place we've looked (and we have) I'd be paying $1k a month in taxes. Yes I could easily afford it......but we just don't want to impact our savings plan to pay a tax bill just yet. I'll stick with my piece of crap ranch and retire affordably.....and while I'm relatively young.

 

[Dench]

I don't understand what the fuss is all about re: NH property taxes. Ours are 25% of what we paid in MA. And there are no other meaningful taxes. And on top of that, the roads are better and we never lose power. Go figure. Ultimately it comes down to urban and suburban areas -- you're going to get hosed on cost of living in those areas pretty much wherever you go, and the northern NE states simply have smaller urban/suburban footprints so costs are much lower relative to other more populated areas.

I don't understand what you mean. Are you saying your overall tax burden is 25% of that from MA or are you saying your property taxes are 25% of that in MA?

One of the things I was running into when trying to move to NH was work. Due to MA legacy firefighting contracts, very few MA departments allow FF's to live out of state (or in my case, 10 miles from the city). So, I'd have to quit sooner than later. The problem is the base for a FF in NH is quite lower compared to MA, especially where I was working. So, I was looking at about a 30-40% pay cut for the same job.

I eventually quasi landed a federal firefighting gig. However, it was in Maine. And Maine has income tax. So now I was going to have to eat that while I ate NH property tax and the base was still quite low compared to what I was making in MA.

I tried. Boy oh boy did I try. The last thing I wanted to do was move to FL, it was something of a meme to my family that I'd move to FL. Over my dead body I thought. Well, after 2 years of looking I ran out of time. And here I am in. In FL. f***.

 

[usernameinuse]

I haven't researched much about Maine but today my desire is New Hampshire. I would like to be off the beaten path and I think some places in NH the taxes aren't as bad in smaller towns. I'm born & raised in MA and the ushering in of Healey will be the final straw. The other option is TX but that has it's own drawbacks.

 

[ChevyGuy91]

I don't understand what you mean. Are you saying your overall tax burden is 25% of that from MA or are you saying your property taxes are 25% of that in MA?

One of the things I was running into when trying to move to NH was work. Due to MA legacy firefighting contracts, very few MA departments allow FF's to live out of state (or in my case, 10 miles from the city). So, I'd have to quit sooner than later. The problem is the base for a FF in NH is quite lower compared to MA, especially where I was working. So, I was looking at about a 30-40% pay cut for the same job.

I eventually quasi landed a federal firefighting gig. However, it was in Maine. And Maine has income tax. So now I was going to have to eat that while I ate NH property tax and the base was still quite low compared to what I was making in MA.

I tried. Boy oh boy did I try. The last thing I wanted to do was move to FL, it was something of a meme to my family that I'd move to FL. Over my dead body I thought. Well, after 2 years of looking I ran out of time. And here I am in. In FL. f***.

This is what trips people up in this conversation, they want to live in NH and keep their MA/ME jobs. So they pay more in property taxes while paying an other state's income tax. Obviously that is going to be expensive. The reason why firefighters get paid shit here? Tax payers in most towns don't want to pay for that service.

It kind of cracks me up when people bitch about the cost of property taxes while looking to live in expensive towns packed with tax funded services because they need to commute to their income taxed jobs out of state. But hey, PMAGs dude!

 

[Broc]

Then, when you have picked your slice of hillbilly hevan, SHOW UP AND VOTE TO KEEP IT THAT WAY.

When people can't be bothered to show up to a once per year meeting to vote for sh*t at their gun club, do you expect them to be involved in their town?

And keep in mind, many here are a bunch of hypocrites and it is probably a good thing they don't show up to town meetings, they would vote for more spending while also voting for less building then complain about higher taxes.

 

[Broc]

I just want to throw it out there ... you can pay less taxes in Boston than anywhere around if you live in your house (including NH and ME) and reap the retarded appreciation rates all the hospitals, all the enslar by jobs, the MBTA (lol)...

But you also have to deal with Boston BS.

Figured I would mention it since everyone seems to focus on RE taxes and nothing else, then move to Boston.

 

[LittleCalm]

Think you have repeated this several times, but don’t say what town in NH or MA or what the value of the properties are.

Yes, our real estate taxes are less in NH as a dollar amount.

As a percentage of the value of the property, they are 2-1/2 to 3X what we pay in Boston.

A friend has a house in Bedford, NH, which is an affluent town with amenities. He has been paying over $10,000 a year in real estate taxes on a $400,000 house (purchase price) for several years. A friend bought a house in Exeter in 2010 for $200,000: property tax then was $6,000.

There are still small towns in NH off the beaten track with no schools, very low property values, and very low real estate taxes. Definitely worth paying attention to all those factors.

Decision depends whether you are working or retired, need health care, have kids in school or not, want lakes, mountains, skiing, kindergarten, etc.

Fiber optic internet at reasonable cost is spreading, which is great.

Not trying to avoid the question, but I’m not giving out detailed info on the inter webs. I’ll just note that our RE taxes went from 1.1% of home value to 0.7% so that’s like a 36% reduction. We live in a good community with good schools and amenities. Boston and surrounding areas certainly have high paying jobs and you need to find a high paying job that will far surpass the overall extreme COL burden in order to save meangfully. And I agree it depends on whether you are retired - Metrowest not a good retirement community b/c of COL - your savings won’t get you far. Ultimately, the percentage above is meaningless. It’s what you actually pay that will matter. You actually pay a lot more in MA. At least we did. And then MA hits you with all the other stuff, like town excise taxes simply for having a car garaged there. I have no regrets and MA has high paying jobs, though that is mostly an urban/suburban vs rural thing. Hopefully WFH will change that for a lot of people in the future. I realize that the eventual move to a lower COL area is not for everyone.

 

[Amputee Marksman]

Not trying to avoid the question, but I’m not giving out detailed info on the inter webs. I’ll just note that our RE taxes went from 1.1% of home value to 0.7% so that’s like a 36% reduction. We live in a good community with good schools and amenities. Boston and surrounding areas certainly have high paying jobs and you need to find a high paying job that will far surpass the overall extreme COL burden in order to save meangfully. And I agree it depends on whether you are retired - Metrowest not a good retirement community b/c of COL - your savings won’t get you far. Ultimately, the percentage above is meaningless. It’s what you actually pay that will matter. You actually pay a lot more in MA. At least we did. And then MA hits you with all the other stuff, like town excise taxes simply for having a car garaged there. I have no regrets and MA has high paying jobs, though that is mostly an urban/suburban vs rural thing. Hopefully WFH will change that for a lot of people in the future. I realize that the eventual move to a lower COL area is not for everyone.

What you are not mentioning is what happens when you die in MA. MA has one of the worst estate taxes in the country. Kicks in at $1 million and is variable up to 16%. (There are ways to avoid this with non-revocable trusts etc. but I'm going to speak from the perspective of the average person who does not do this.) I know you will be dead but you don't want the state to grab what you leave behind instead of your kids or other family members getting it.

In general if you own a house inside of 495 and have a modest 401k you will hit a $1 million and the state will grab its chunk. Not much pissed me off more than when both my Mom died and the estate settled the state of MA grabbed almost $200k in estate taxes. That is totally BS. Make sure you go someplace with no estate tax.

 

[Laura]

What state would you choose: Maine or New Hampshire? From a firearms point of view. Taxes, chances of future legislation, etc.

New Hampshire likely. Maine is far more liberal and crushing.

 

[Asaltweapon]

I just want to throw it out there ... you can pay less taxes in Boston than anywhere around if you live in your house (including NH and ME) and reap the retarded appreciation rates all the hospitals, all the enslar by jobs, the MBTA (lol)...

But you also have to deal with Boston BS.

Figured I would mention it since everyone seems to focus on RE taxes and nothing else, then move to Boston.

You could not have paid me enough to live in Boston or at present, move back to Mass.

 

[Len-2A Training]

MA has income tax, real estate tax, sales tax, auto excise tax, restaurant/hotel tax, very high estate taxes, etc. Taxes retirement income!
NH has real estate tax, auto excise tax (they don't call it that), restaurant/hotel tax and tax on dividends/interest. NO tax on retirement income and NO estate tax!!!
I suspect ME has similar taxes to MA.

RE taxes vary all over the place. Some towns in MA and in NH have very low RE tax rates where others have high rates. You can't compare one state against another, you need to compare towns in one place to specific towns in another place.

The house we bought in NH would have sold for $100-150K more in the town in MA we came from (and we bought before COVID was even discovered). RE taxes at our NH home started ~$1500 less than our MA home. We did put ~$50K into capital improvements in NH (upgraded electrical service, whole house generator, HVAC mini-splits installed), so our assessment increased by ~$8K and our RE tax did increase some. If we wanted to be in the boonies, we could have saved a lot of money on house prices and RE taxes, but being retired and older a huge criteria was to be ~1hr from Boston's major hospitals (and I don't trust the hospitals in NH, only Dartmouth-Hitchcock is a true trauma center, level one) as we don't know what the future holds wrt health needs.

Salaries up here suck and I have no desire to feed the pigs on Bacon Hill any longer, so we're taking the retirement instead of looking for work at $10-15/hr.

 

[Len-2A Training]

What you are not mentioning is what happens when you die in MA. MA has one of the worst estate taxes in the country. Kicks in at $1 million and is variable up to 16%. (There are ways to avoid this with non-revocable trusts etc. but I'm going to speak from the perspective of the average person who does not do this.) I know you will be dead but you don't want the state to grab what you leave behind instead of your kids or other family members getting it.

In general if you own a house inside of 495 and have a modest 401k you will hit a $1 million and the state will grab its chunk. Not much pissed me off more than when both my Mom died and the estate settled the state of MA grabbed almost $200k in estate taxes. That is totally BS. Make sure you go someplace with no estate tax.

My understanding is that the MA estate tax STARTS at 16% (from the first dollar) and goes up from there if the estate is valued at $1,000,001 or more. The sliding scale tax increases as the estate value hits certain higher thresholds. My info was from a friend whose career was a financial planner. He fled MA for NH and FL for this reason . . . and it was a significant reason why we moved to NH.

New Hampshire likely. Maine is far more liberal and crushing.

The town we moved to and most around us (except for Nashua itself) are staunch Rep. territory and very conservative. The major cities and college towns are the opposite, but I suspect that you'd find that in most every state.

 

[Dench]

This is what trips people up in this conversation, they want to live in NH and keep their MA/ME jobs. So they pay more in property taxes while paying an other state's income tax. Obviously that is going to be expensive. The reason why firefighters get paid shit here? Tax payers in most towns don't want to pay for that service.

It kind of cracks me up when people bitch about the cost of property taxes while looking to live in expensive towns packed with tax funded services because they need to commute to their income taxed jobs out of state. But hey, PMAGs dude!

The fire service in NH is... well... you know. NH is like "NFPA 1710, wat?"

FL has a weird balance on this one. Full disclosure I hate the FL firefighting dynamic as it's mainly EMS focused which I hate with a burning passion. However, the coverage here is good, the equipment is top notch and so are the stations. The problem is the pay blows as does the amount of hours in a work week, which is usually 72.

If someone wants to catch a structure fire every 5 years and go to an endless stream of EMS calls, I highly recommend FL firefighting.

 

[Fishfinder]

This is 100% true. People should stop coming here and go live in Maine.

Sorry folks, Maine's full.

 

[Fishfinder]

My understanding is that the MA estate tax STARTS at 16% (from the first dollar) and goes up from there if the estate is valued at $1,000,001 or more. The sliding scale tax increases as the estate value hits certain higher thresholds. My info was from a friend whose career was a financial planner. He fled MA for NH and FL for this reason . . . and it was a significant reason why we moved to NH.

The town we moved to and most around us (except for Nashua itself) are staunch Rep. territory and very conservative. The major cities and college towns are the opposite, but I suspect that you'd find that in most every state.

A majority of Maine is rural and conservative but the heavily populated cities are very liberal.

 

[Fishfinder]

New Hampshire likely. Maine is far more liberal and crushing.

That depends on where you live in Maine.
The rural areas are very conservative.

 

[caboose84]

What you are not mentioning is what happens when you die in MA. MA has one of the worst estate taxes in the country. Kicks in at $1 million and is variable up to 16%. (There are ways to avoid this with non-revocable trusts etc. but I'm going to speak from the perspective of the average person who does not do this.) I know you will be dead but you don't want the state to grab what you leave behind instead of your kids or other family members getting it.

In general if you own a house inside of 495 and have a modest 401k you will hit a $1 million and the state will grab its chunk. Not much pissed me off more than when both my Mom died and the estate settled the state of MA grabbed almost $200k in estate taxes. That is totally BS. Make sure you go someplace with no estate tax.

I recall when Rose Kennedy passed away- in Hyannisport- she was officially a Florida resident and her will was filed in Palm Beach County. No estate taxes in FL.

 

[Amputee Marksman]

My understanding is that the MA estate tax STARTS at 16% (from the first dollar) and goes up from there if the estate is valued at $1,000,001 or more. The sliding scale tax increases as the estate value hits certain higher thresholds. My info was from a friend whose career was a financial planner. He fled MA for NH and FL for this reason . . . and it was a significant reason why we moved to NH.

The town we moved to and most around us (except for Nashua itself) are staunch Rep. territory and very conservative. The major cities and college towns are the opposite, but I suspect that you'd find that in most every state.

I don't know the specifics other than it is a sliding rate with the max at 16% The estate lawyer recommend a CPA and we used them for all the work.

It was about a $2.2m estate and ended up with $189k in estate taxes. The chart I saw a few years ago when we did this showed that between $2m and $3m it would range roughly from 8% to 9%.

 

[AFAR/PFAR]

tax on dividends/interest.

Goes away in 2027. Is being phased out a percentage at a time until then.

Even for my ridiculously inefficient portfolio, I'm only paying $451 this year.

 

[TJ4]

I recall when Rose Kennedy passed away- in Hyannisport- she was officially a Florida resident and her will was filed in Palm Beach County. No estate taxes in FL.

And she literally didn’t leave Massachusetts for the last 10 years of her life. No one wanted to contest it because teddy k still had clout. The same reason the rose Kennedy parkway was named for her. She never did anything for “the people” to warrant that, and her biggest claim to fame was spreading her legs for joe. Also the same reason we ended up with that ridiculous $1 coin. Teddy was protecting the family’s interest in a vending machine business and was told by the vending machine companies that $1 coins would help them out.

 

[PatMcD]

Just so everybody knows: there's no free ride. It takes a certain amount of money to run a state. That money comes from somewhere.
Large, rural states are way more inefficient than small states, so it takes more taxes in some form or other.

My point is: it's only money. Why would you live in a place you hate just because of money?

 

[TJ4]

If you’re looking at places to live in nh here’s a pro tip. Keep driving north until you no longer see graffiti on the soundproofing walls on the highway. That’s when you know that you’re away from the “equitable housing” areas setup by HUD, at least for a few years.

 

[headednorth]

The fire service in NH is... well... you know. NH is like "NFPA 1710, wat?"

FL has a weird balance on this one. Full disclosure I hate the FL firefighting dynamic as it's mainly EMS focused which I hate with a burning passion. However, the coverage here is good, the equipment is top notch and so are the stations. The problem is the pay blows as does the amount of hours in a work week, which is usually 72.

If someone wants to catch a structure fire every 5 years and go to an endless stream of EMS calls, I highly recommend FL firefighting.

Not a ff but that seems like it would be the case in MA as well. (maybe more structure fires up here due to the typical building construction?) Id think ff's in MA spend most of their time on alarm malfunctions, food on the stove, chest pains and minor car accidents. Actual fires seem to be pretty rare here as well but you'd know better than me.

 

[headednorth]

A majority of Maine is rural and conservative but the heavily populated cities are very liberal.

Describes most states unfortunately