I’m Fixing to Set the Record Straight on Taxes and Insurance

I’m fixing to set the record straight on taxes and insurance.

In just a few weeks, just before Christmas, it’ll be time to shell out the second part of your property tax. Most folks have already paid the first half, which was due the middle of last month. The story is that it was split in half this year for the convenience of the taxpayer, but the truth is, we had to shell out half of this amount two months earlier than last year, and I don’t consider having to pay something early as a convenience. Maybe it is to the local government, but not to me.

Now to the real numbers of property tax. Mine only went up $13.42 (not even enough to measure an increase) over last year, and when I tell folks that they in turn tell me how fortunate I am. But am I?

While my property taxes had a slight increase, my property value had a dramatic decrease, to the tune of minus 49 percent!

So if you take the amount I was taxed based on my former property value and apply that rate to the amount of the decreased value of my property, my taxes were actually increased by 51 percent.

I have pretty good faith in these numbers because I had an appraisal done and crunched the numbers with a calculator, and won’t even mention the fact that I passed accounting 101 and 102 at Georgia State University. But I just did mention that.

Now let’s get to the cost of the insurance on your property including homeowners, outbuildings and personal property. While my income and property value were plummeting, the insurance industry decided they would increase my cost by a whopping 24 percent! I was shocked when I opened he bill and compared it to last year’s bill. It made sense to me that it should have gone down since my property value had.

You just divide the new price into the old price and take the number to right of the decimal mark and that’s the amount of the increase.

I suppose some folks won’t even notice the increase and not compare it to last year’s price, and others who pay it into an escrow account with their monthly mortgage payment not even notice the increase in their payments.

Around the end of last year the Georgia State Insurance Commissioner’s Office approved the requests of insurance companies at a level of increase of 23 percent. Some of them asked for twice that much. Their reasoning for approving the increases was that the insurance companies showed underwriting losses for the past several years due to hard weather.

Well duh?? Isn’t that what they are supposed to do with the money they take in?

I could show some underwriting losses of my own, but who do I appeal to for an increase? It’s the same old story, no one takes a loss, they just pass it on to you and I, the consumers.

But wait, the story’s not over. I took my decreased property value to the insurance company and reduced the amount of insurance to conform with the decreased and current value of my property, and got the cost of the policy down to the same as it was last year.

Two can play the same game. I showed them, but just for the time being, because I know they’ll be asking for another increase soon.

So far, I haven’t discovered a method to make my property taxes conform with the decreased value of my property, but I’m fixing to be working on it.