The short answer is ....... I have no idea.
Searching the internet, I've come up with a few data points.
For every $1 that the government spends in tax dollars, it costs the tax payers $1.39. This is sometimes to referred to as Dead-weight costs of taxation.
The state of California (my home state) most recent expenditures totaled $7,983,401,585.00 for elementary and secondary education. This represents $1,549.39 per capita. As this is an average, many households pay much less per person and other pay much more in educational taxes.
For simplicity, I will assume that this represents my household of 5. That would be $7746.95 of funding provided by my family. Now take into account the dead weight cost of taxation. That $7,700 of school funding would cost our family $10,768.26 per year. This is in addition to the approximately $5000 of educational funding I provide for my own children.
Because taxes vary greatly by income and property value, in actuality, my family may be paying much more or less. I have no idea. I've spent a few hours trying to decipher exactly how much my family is paying. I've come to the conclusion that the powers that be try very hard to hide that information. The only data I can get from my property tax bill is the percentage I pay to support school bonds. (I have to do the math myself to get the dollar amount.)
In California, Proposition 13 protects home owners from paying dramatic increases as their property values rise. Since we bought our house when the market was significantly lower than now, our property tax rate is one-half to one-third that of most of our neighbors.
I'm guessing that our education tax rate is $5000, but that is only a guess. I still have no idea.
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Tags : taxation , government schools , public education , homeschool ,
4 comments:
Where we are, out of every '$7 per $100,' that we get taxed, $5 goes to the schools.
All other services -- city, fire, police, library, etc. -- share the remaining $2.
Wow! So how did you find that out? I've looked and look on the internet and have had a difficult time finding and sort of number.
The only thing I know is in my town what I pay for property taxes to our town. In our town I also know what the town spends on town expenses vs. the town education budget. (Our area does not do schools by district, each town is their own education system.)
I can figure the percent of our town budget that goes to education vs. the other town expenses. I could then figure back what I pay with that percentage and come up with a figure.
However, I also pay state income taxes. The state kicks in money to our town and others. So who knows how much of our family income is taken from us by the state income tax and paid toward the schools?
We pay federal taxes. Who knows what part of the federal taxes we pay goes toward education.
If we take an even larger view we could start discussing the serives and goods we buy that go to local businesses who pay taxes too that go to towns that then get spent on education, how the cost of business tax is offset by rising prices for our goods and services consumed. But that gets overwhelming...
For my family the best thing would be only to think about what portion of our town property tax goes directly toward education expenses in this town.
Another figure worth pondering is how much the town spend per pupil. In this town elementary and middle schools are $9500 per student per year and high school is $14500 per year. A lot of times people compare what towns and cities spend per pupil to deliver the education. People like to compare test scores vs. spending and they like to think that spending more will result in more highly educated students. That is thought by many to be a myth.
39% of the California General Fund spending goes toward PK-12 education. Personal income tax makes up 54% of general fund revenues, sales & use taxes make up roughly 30%, and capital gains taxes make up a little less than 10%.
I'm not sure what our landlady pays in property taxes since she's owned this place for a number of years. A portion of our rent does go to cover those taxes in any event.
What I'd really like to know is how much of that spending goes to benefit children of illegal immigrants (regardless of whether those children are U.S. citizens). I know that 42% of the children in CA's government-run schools are considered to be English Language Learners, but that doesn't necessarily make their parents illegal aliens.
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