MoldyNalgene t1_j1ynwvf wrote
Reply to comment by moxie-maniac in Newcomers to New Hampshire and Maine continue to drive population growth: More people are dying than being born, so population growth depends on people moving in from elsewhere by TurretLauncher
The pay in Maine is garbage for the COL in the southern part of the state. You add Maine's exceedingly high taxes to the mix, and it's no surprise young people are leaving. Employers in Maine need to pay more, and the state needs to reduce taxes for the younger generations if they want to develop a better economy.
lucidlilacdream t1_j1ytynj wrote
We actually moved here from Arizona, and I assumed the taxes would be much higher since it’s the northeast. But, taxes are surprisingly pretty comparable.
Cost of living, in general, is higher though. I agree local wages are low compared to the COL as well. Usually as COL rises, pay does as well. Maine employers don’t seem to get that. Remote work is really the only way to make it work, unless you are in a high demand, highly skilled healthcare field.
ralphy1010 t1_j1yx5kg wrote
that's been a thing for a while now, people can't understand why no one is interested in the min wage job with no benefits they are advertising. Instead they cry how no one wants to work anymore.
w1nn1ng1 t1_j1zhpip wrote
It’s pretty crazy how brainwashed they have us. I’m a network engineer by trade. In Maine, at my peak, I was making around $80k. I was constantly told I was overpaid and that I didn’t work hard enough. Fast forward to today. I now work for a company based out of San Francisco. When they offered me my job, I figured they start me at around $70k. I was astonished when they offered me $90k and apologized they couldn’t offer more. I’ve been here for two years. I work half as hard as I used to and my boss is over the moon with my performance. It’s bizarre. Maine employers are just shit level.
lucidlilacdream t1_j20b8eg wrote
It doesn’t help that many people have never left the state or New England. Hopefully this changes over time, but there’s definitely some idea that you should just be glad to have a job and have no problem working overtime simply because you are employed, which is pretty short sighted given the labor shortage…
metalandmeeples t1_j1yyf1r wrote
Aren't property taxes significantly lower in AZ? I'm sure it's dependent on the municipality, but my parents are paying 4x the property tax since moving back home. AZ also has much lower income tax, no excise tax on vehicles, etc. Sales tax is much higher though.
lucidlilacdream t1_j1yzz2w wrote
Maybe it depends on the town? Our property taxes are pretty much identical in Brunswick as they were in Arizona, and we were in Tucson, so not Scottsdale or something. I’m sure taxes are higher in Portland and the nearby towns.
The income tax is really about the same. I was very surprised when I got my first paycheck, I assumed I would be paying a lot more in taxes. It is slightly higher, but nothing compared to friends that moved from AZ to California and Minnesota. It’s really not much of a notable difference, except that the K-12 schools are much better funded here.
Food is a lot more expensive, and heating is expensive. Car maintenance is more because of winter. So, in general COL, yes, is higher.
metalandmeeples t1_j1z1577 wrote
Brunswick has a high mill rate but, generally speaking, the average property tax burden of each resident increases every step south until you hit Falmouth. Even though mill rates vary, the assessed values keep climbing the closer one gets to Portland. Portland and South Portland are different because they are larger cities with more diverse housing options, not unlike Brunswick. Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth also have a very high property tax burden per resident.
lucidlilacdream t1_j1z1zjb wrote
Property taxes go up in the more affluent parts of AZ. This is true everywhere. Of course taxes are going to be high in Cape Elizabeth, that is the wealthiest part of Maine. But, yes, I’m sure it’s higher in Cape Elizabeth compared to most places.
I do understand that Portland taxes are higher though, and that it doesn’t necessarily correlate with wages because property values shot up. Also, that they continue to increase.
metalandmeeples t1_j1z438i wrote
One thing I've found interesting is the relationship between property assessments and school funding provided by the state. MSAD 51 (Cumberland / North Yarmouth) received a higher percentage of their school funding from the state than nearby towns that are both less affluent and more affluent. 46.23% of their school budget is paid by the state. Brunswick only gets 38% from the state and Freeport/Pownal/Durham only gets 26.57%. There are some other outliers, like Gorham, which has 58.38% covered.
metalandmeeples t1_j1yyr2f wrote
The COL in Southern Maine seriously spiked in the last 10 years when the housing market was at the bottom. Property values, in many cases, have tripled which has really wreaked havoc for anyone who didn't personally realize those gains. If we didn't buy our house in Portland in 2014, we'd probably still be renting while watching the gap between our available down payment and the needed down payment continue to grow.
mainegreenerep t1_j1znbvk wrote
> You add Maine's exceedingly high taxes to the mix
The whole tax burden thing is pretty much bollocks. Most states have very similar effective tax burdens. Costs are costs, and payment will be extracted. Maine is just more straightforward in how we do it, while a lot of states with supposed lower tax burdens just get you in other ways. Some states are more expensive, but overall costs that the state imposes are very similar between most states. We do have higher costs in some areas like heating of course, and cost of living does vary, but that's usually outside of state control.
MoldyNalgene t1_j1zqvtx wrote
Many lists of states by tax burden have Maine listed as #3; refer to the link below. Then you have taxes like vehicle excise tax, which many states do not have. The average new car costs about $48k as of July 2022. With Maine's excise tax you'll be paying an additional $3600 in the first six years, and that's on top of the sales tax paid.
The other big issue is the tax brackets. If you as an individual made more than $54k in 2022, you are in the highest tax bracket of 7.15%. In Southern Maine an income of $54k is not much given cost of living. The average one bedroom apartment has a rent of just about $1800/month in Portland in fall 2022 according to the Bangor Daily News. That comes out to $21,600/year just in rent. At a gross income of $54k/year you'll be spending 40% of your income on rent. Generally they say rent should be no more than 30% of gross income. Explain to me why the state should be taxing someone in the highest tax bracket that can't even afford to keep rent at at less than 30% their annual income. Maine really needs to update their tax brackets because it currently acts like middle class people are going home and jumping into pools of money like Scrooge McDuck.
It gets better though. The state has now decided that regardless of income or wealth, the boomers and silent generation can freeze their property taxes if they've owned a home in Maine for 10 or more years. At some point the state will need to raise taxes on the younger generations to pay for that freeze or start cutting services.
mainegreenerep t1_j204bsu wrote
> Forbes List
That's problem number one right there. Forbes is pretty mediocre for cherry picking, and rarely accounts for things like reduced services, privatized costs etc.
Unless you're doing a cost of living comparison, a tax burden comparison is less informative than you might think. I'm not saying Maine's the best! (we're not) nor that we can't improve, but any argument that's just is about how Maine's taxes are terrible, you can pretty much just discount that argument. It's almost always based on biased or poorly calculated sources (you can't compare taxes in a dense, warm climate state to a rural poor state fairly). But even just going off taxes and nothing else, Maine's taxes are higher, but compared to other cold weather states on a relative scale, not so much.
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