Real Estate Filing Fees

According to a Star Ledger Editorial link "real estate filing fees have risen by as much as 800 percent in some cases. ...The previous $500 fee has jumped to $1,715 on a $300,000 dwelling and $4,175 on a $500,000 house." This tax, was intended to help pay for help for "overworked" county clerks that had a major increase in workload because of an increase in real estate transactions.

Guess what? The funds never made it to their intended place.

"Over the four-year period studied by the SCI, more than $1.2 billion was collected but only $107.9 million went to the operations of the county clerks."

But the Ledger, which is starting to get it, gets to the real point at the end of it's editorial.

"Such a cavalier, public-be-damned attitude is unacceptable. The shell game has to stop."

The solution is to give the people of New Jersey referrendum power. New Jersey needs it's own version of California's Prop 13 and 4 which reduced taxes and severly limited the ability of politicians to spend. A brief history of Prop 13 and 4 can be found here , but the brief synopsis is:

In the 1970s soaring property values in California led to dramatic increases in property taxes, prompting a tax revolt that resulted in the passage of Proposition 13* in the June 1978 California primary. Also called the Jarvis-Gann Initiative after its chief sponsors, Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann. Proposition 13 reduced local property taxes by 57% and thereby slashed the revenue base for local governments and schools. Over the years the revenue loss has been made up by a varying mix of state funds and new revenue from specialized local fees and taxes, as well as by outright local budget cuts.

The California tax revolt did not end with Proposition 13. In November 1979 voters passed the Proposition 4,* also known as the Gann Amendment. Proposition 4 imposed a limit on most state and local government expenditures from tax sources. The limit is calculated annually according to a formula based on population and the cost of living. Under Proposition 4, excess revenues must be returned to the taxpayers. The Gann limit, as it is often called, was not exceeded until the 1986-87 fiscal year when $1.1 billion was refunded to taxpayers.