Duncan Roberts

I work in city 1 and pay them via my work, my wife works in city 2 and she pays them via work, we both lived in city 3 until a couple of weeks ago so we pay them via a check every month and we now live in city 4 so will pay them next year when we get the bill, plus any owed to city 3. I just leave it all up to the accountant to figure out the best way to pay the least amount of tax!

I think it works out for me about 2.5% of my taxable income for city tax where I work, about 3% to the state, about 9% for federal (which between my wife and I should have us breaking about even at the end of the year, you can pay more or less depending on your situation), social security and medicare which is something like 7.2% for both and then the city taxes for where we live which isn't much but I don't know the %, maybe 1.75% of the state tax for city 3 and 1.5% for city 4. Roughly speaking all told I pay about 25% of my income for tax. Then you have to tag on all the other things like the various insurances and retirement.

http://stlouis.missouri.org/citygov/...rningstax.html for work, don't know about the residential part.

celticgrid

A difference between Council Tax (UK) and Property tax (at least as in NY) is that Council Tax is levied according to the valuation band of the property AND other factors such as the number of people living there. In NY the property tax is solely based on the valuation of the property.

Thus a rent in Ny can easily be calculated, whereas in the UK the council tax due from a property changes according to who is living there and it is far easier to collect from the resident rather than the owner.

Anyway....

Yes, the US way is a bit confusing. Arriving last year I lived part in PA, where 'local' (i.e. non-Federal, non-State) tax was income based and part in NY where it is purely property based. Luckily, the deal was that after I'd done UK tax returns for umpteen years the US ones would be done by my USC wife

This is one area of complexity I had not gone into properly before we moved!

dzial67

Beginning to wish I didn't start this post but I do understand that you are trying to help which I am grateful for.

I do appreciate the difference between £ and $ - just my fat fingers hitting the wrong key!

I/We are quite used to having tax taken out of our wages by our employer so nothing new there - can be between 24% to 40% in the UK for low to upper average earnings.

My concern was about having to pay a 'City Tax', a term that I'm not familiar with, and in the context of my OP which was related to Property Tax, are there additional taxes based on property not income? It seems there are not as we are talking about an Income Tax.

We wont be living marginally but as we don't want to borrow any money, our budget is lean so I don't want any surprise costs

dzial67

Thanks - 25% is very much in line with what we are used to in the UK

Duncan Roberts

I should mention that we have some significant tax write offs so our taxable income is a lot less than our earned income. Two of the biggest is mortgage interest which you wont have and a child which I don't think you have so your federal tax will likely be a considerably higher percentage.

On your initial question, you should not have to pay any tax based on your rental.

Rete

I believe my tax bracket is more in line with 28%. But then I don't have any dependents other than myself and I'm a renter as well.

Sorry OP, I wasn't trying to be rude in my other reply to you. You will pay less or about the same as you pay in the UK but you will get less value for your monies.

One tax I don't know if you will have or not is "personal property" tax. This is a separate tax paid to the motor vehicle department in some areas. It is an annual tax on the value of your vehicle.

MsElui

we lived in 3 cities (not really cities but towns) in one tax year. So we had to pay three bits of city tax, one lot of state tax, another city tax for where my husband worked, and then federal tax. thats a lot of different tax forms to complete! This year we will have lived in the same city the whole year but my husband will have worked in 2 different cities so its complicated in a different way!

Tarkak9

Off subject but relavent... if your renting, for your protection address as a provision of the lease, what is to occur, esp with your rent and security deposit, should the LL go into foreclosure etc.


assuming its an investment property, they'd be able to write off a whole lot more...

Folinskyinla

OP:

A lot of Brits don't catch on to the idea that the United States is a "Federal" system. Each state has individual laws and they can vary. The relations between the states and the Federal Government has been a continuing issue since the beginning of the United States. Actually, the disputes actually became somewhat violent in 1861 to 1865.

The point is that the taxation in various jurisdictions can vary a lot. Some states have income tax, some don't. Some have sales tax, some don't. [For many years the yacht merchants Oregon would sell many yachts to California residents, but the yacht would remain home ported in Oregon for 18 months -- supposedly]

Don't ask to compare "U.S." taxes to those in the UK -- you have to compare your place of intended residence. Otherwise you will not only be comparing apples and oranges, you won't know what orange you are dealing with. A bushel of oranges is different from each individual orange.

Kate2112

Though tenants of Council Housing can be welfare recipients, many are not.

dzial67

I'd like to close this out because I have the answer to my original question and thank everyone who helped with that. It's also drifting off topic and getting contentious.

Folinskyinla

My post was about Property Tax and I think I'm right in saying, in the context of my question, that it is applied pretty much the same in every state. Other posters introduced City Tax and Personal Property Tax and you will see that my questions were then specific to St Louis. I am well aware that there are different situations in different states, counties etc.

With respect to Income Tax I was just trying to get a ball park figure which I did and am hapy with. As I said in one of my posts, income tax in the UK has a pretty big band width, and I was just looking for a typical figure.

Kate2112

I was using the word Welfare in the context that I thought Rete was using it - i.e. that Council Houses are 'provided' by the state. I wasn't intending any slur on the occupants or how they qualify to live there.