Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Taxing questions

According to a recent Lee State Bureau story, Missoula's property taxes are the highest among the state's seven major cities. When you add up all the mills levied by the city, county, school districts, the university system, the state, etc., Missoula's total comes to about 720.20 mills, about 9 mills more than last year.

Answer the following:
1. If the taxable value on a typical Missoula home is $2,756.89, how much will its owners pay in property taxes this year?

2. In 1992, Swibold paid $1,156.92 in property taxes. For 2005, he will pay $2,083.56. How much have his taxes increased in real percentage terms?

Send your answers as a comment to this blog entry. As always, any pertinent observations on this stuff would be welcome as well.

Hints
The answer to Question 2 requires two steps.

1. You know that a dollar buys less each year. That’s called inflation. It happens. So if you hope to be accurate comparing dollar amounts from different years, you have to adjust for inflation. There’s a formula for that, but I prefer using an online inflation calculator provided by America’s official inflation watcher, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It will tell you what a dollar amount from a bygone year would be worth today. Once you find that, you can do a simple calculation to determine the percentage increase.

2. Here’s that formula for that: (New number – Old number) divided by Old number.

Example: A Missoulian will pay about 720 mills this year compared to 711 mills last year. Here’s how you would calculate the percentage increase using the “NOO!” formula:

(720-711) = 9
9 divided by 711 = .0126 or 1.26 percent

4 comments:

Dennis Swibold said...

Eighth grade? My eighth-grader is still doing stem and leaf charts. Those Billings kids always were a little ahead, right?

Dennis Swibold said...

I prefer to think of it as incredibly hip, edgy, cutting-edge even. I think I'll call it a Swiblog.

Dennis Swibold said...

Patrick C. -- You'll need to convert that $1,156.92 into 2005 dollars and then plug the two numbers into the "NOO!" formula. As for a cool picture next to your name, they only give those to really cool people who register their own blogs.

P. Kurt (or the journalist formerly known as Peter) -- One does what one can to class things up, yes? I like your new moniker just fine. As for my interest in blogging, I prefer to think of myself as a trailblazer.

To All -- Danny the Awesome lived up to his self-promotion by providing the first correct answer. Awesome, indeed. Any suggestions on a suitable reward?

Dennis Swibold said...

On your whatscript?