re: “Renters don’t pay property taxes”

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Let’s try this one more time, because we’re going in semantics circles.

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Everyone knows who's name is or is not on the property pax bill. Everyone also knows exactly what everyone else means when someone says the tenant pays for a tax increase. People proudly arguing for the literal interpretation of who's name is on a tax bill instead of easily understanding the common slang of the business passing on it's increased operating expense via increased tax burden to their customer is just a strange thing to choose to argue on the internet. I have to give you your props in being steadfast in your need to argue semantics.

Voters like voting for more taxes then blame the landlords when their rent goes up.


It is very strange.

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When the county mails the property tax bill and, if it’s unpaid, files a tax lien, whose name is on it? The tenant’s or the property owner’s? That’s the answer to who pays the property tax.

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Who gave him the money to pay the property yax?

The giving your kid lunch money analogy is actually perfect.

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Voters like voting for more taxes then blame the landlords when their rent goes up.

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That can’t be correct according to some posters, who are apparently unable to raise rents. Even though 99 percent of their competition is.

That’s another analogy that doesn’t fit.

An escrow account is my money being held by my agent to pay my tax bill.

Rent is paid to a landlord under a lease. After that, it’s the landlord’s money to allocate however he wants. The property tax is still the landlord’s legal obligation.

We’ve reached the point where you’re inventing a new analogy every post instead of addressing the original statement.

“Property taxes affect rent” and “renters pay property taxes” are different statements. I agree with the first. I disagree with the second. I think we’ve exhausted this one.

eta: Never claimed to be a businessman. Hell, my wife does our taxes. But I do know enough to understand that “recovering a cost” and “being the taxpayer” aren’t synonyms.

As a landlord, let me explain the entire mystery of how I determine the rent I charge.

I look at a potential investment property and determine the down payment and what I could theoretically make on that money if I invested it in the stock market versus as a rental property down payment. We will call the average lost investment income expense “A”

Next I determine what my main loan will cost me per month. We will call this expense “B”

Next I get an insurance quote. Expense “C”

Next I determine the property taxes, which are higher than normal because there won’t be a homestead exemption. Expense “D”

Next I determine an average maintenance expenses. This is conservative because I want to pay someone else to fix everything. Expense “E”

I need a little profit and a rainy day fund. Expense “F”

The rent that I charge will be A + B + C + D + E + F

I end up with a free house that the renter is paying for. I also depreciate the property and deduct that cost, my loan interest, property taxes, and maintenance expenses from my income tax. On paper I will lose money every year from a tax standpoint, thus reducing my other income from a tax standpoint.

I bought an old house in a flood zone to live in as early as I could save up enough for a low down payment. Kept it 3 years and sold it for something better with a larger down payment from the appreciation and little bit of principal paid down from the previous house. Rinse, repeat until I had a nice house and enough equity to do a HELOC and use the funds to buy a rental property. Being a landlord was never my day job, just a way to build equity.

If I rented my entire life I would own nothing and would have bought several houses for landlords by now. A first time buyer can literally get away with only putting 5% down. Will you be able to afford a nice house as your first home? Probably not. Will you have to learn to fix toilets and change light bulbs? Yep. Will you be glad you did in 20 years? Absolutely.

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Because some of you are too stubborn to admit you are wrong

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by LSUFanHouston

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Many people in this thread agree with me.

I’ve defended my original post in many ways.

Some of you can’t handle truth.

Let’s try this one more time.

Renters pay property taxes.

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What laws are renters breaking purely by renting?

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Didn't say renters are breaking the law! My analogy centered on the issue of folks voting for or against something that they have no vested interest in, but now that I think about it, the renter can easily pass the tax on to the renter.