I haven’t been able to itemize in years, so no. Additionally, I don’t think they way Texas bills and assesses taxes would work out, anyway (I think they’re due in December and assessed in like June, so the “trick” in the past would have been to pay one year’s taxes late in January to get double credit in one year). And anyway, we pay through escrow so I’m not even sure how I’d work out an alternate payment schedule.
If the law were written responsibly it would have gone into effect in 2019 to give the IRS and the states time to implement it properly but it was slapdash bullshit.
I read in the paper today that municipalities (or their constituents) might file a class action suit against the IRS to make them prove their bulletin is legit. In my opinion, if you say “I want to pay now for X” and the government says “We will accept your payment for X,” well dammit, that counts as paying X. I don’t care if X is a good, a service, or a tax. If I give you money, you take the money, and we both agree on the reason/service/product the payment’s for, that’s all it takes!
So I think all counties should just say “We accepted payment, which implies there’s something to be paid, so that’s a de facto assessment.” I don’t see a viable legal route around that, since the county is the authority on such matters.
I did; but not on purpose. This is my first year paying my taxes. A requirement of my mortgage was I pay them monthly for HO ins and property taxes. I paid off my mortgage in early Spring. I paid in taxes June and again earlier this month. I just checked and the bank paid in January of this year. So I paid 1 1/2 years worth of property tax this year. Oops. So this is good, right?
My husband and were discussing this recently. I inherited my house, which is located in what’s a very desirable urban suburb. Let’s put it this way: When a neighbor sells his 2BR 1500-sq, foot cape for the same price as my MIL selling her antique farmhouse in a rather tony town 25 miles south, you have to wonder about property values. Inheriting is not unusual in this neck of the woods. In fact, most of the people in my neighborhood – as well as the general area – have inherited their homes. They’re now slowly moving out as the property tax creeps up. The town next door has exploded with gentrification and new construction these last couple of years. It’s also driving out longstanding residents like myself.
We’ve experienced long term illness/injuries as well as unemployment in our marriage. My husband, when employed, makes a very good salary. I’m at the top of the heap salary-wise in what’s known as a notoriously low-paying industry.
I’ve always been a saver but after being caught unawares about the reality of older home ownership, now I get it. I made the mistake of having to charge a rather large emergency repair a few years ago and I’m going to paying for it until I drop dead.
However, the adage “it’s cheaper to own than rent” is true: My quarterly property tax payment is equivalent to roughly a month’s rent in my area. I make less than that. If you factor in house-related expenses like heating, water, repairs, etc…there you go.
If we hadn’t married I would’ve sold this house as-is as soon as my mother died and moved out the metro area. I still want to do that. However, my husband has no desire to move. This is one of our thornier issues.
They could, though it would probably have to be taxpayers (questionable if municipalities would have standing) and only if, and after, the IRS denies particular people a deduction they claimed. In general, the IRS can’t just say ‘this is how the law works in the details’ and that’s it. IOW IRS guidance just tells you (ideally, if it’s clear) things you’ll have to take the IRS to court over if you disagree. And the IRS loses sometimes in court. But state/local politicians huffing and puffing over if doesn’t really help taxpayers make the decision now (or well I guess about too late now to change whatever decision people made what to do about this). To some extent in some places state/local pols were egging people on for political reasons to do something questionable on their taxes, in case of paying taxes that haven’t been assessed or billed. There’s no (or not much) doubt about prepaying tax bills already in hand.
And in this case there’s an additional question IMO how aggressively the IRS will go after a one time deduction where there’s ambiguity. If this was some permanent loophole it might be different.
We prepaid our property tax here in MA, and also moved as much of our charitable giving as we could into this year.
There’s a case to be made that even if you haven’t usually itemized, pulling property taxes and charitable contributions forward to 2017 might be worth doing if you can afford it…it depends on how close you are to the standard deduction when you look at state and local income taxes, property taxes, charitable contributions, etc.
Of course, it’s just another opportunity available to those who can afford it. Thanks GOP?
Good point. The odds of getting audited for people in our situation is essentially nil. I could claim any number for my property tax and they’ll never know the difference unless they check. And they won’t check unless I claim something totally outrageous. They simply don’t have the resources to send an agent out to my place to potentially save $700.
There’s no sense in prepaying for us. If we’d stayed in the condo, the mortgage would have been paid down enough this year that itemizing wouldn’t have made any sense because the amount of mortgage interest we would pay would be relatively low (15-year mortgage, so mostly principal being paid down, even only 5 years in).
Instead we sold the condo and bought a house, but it wasn’t orders of magnitude more expensive, and I can’t imagine a scenario in which it would make sense to itemize with double the standard deduction. (Still a 15-year mortgage. We are perfectly content to live in a regular working-class neighborhood and have an affordable house and not have to worry about retiring with a mortgage. And have more cash for other things.)