CULLMAN – SmartAsset, a New York-based financial technology company, recently released their second annual study on property taxes. Cullman County ranked ninth among Alabama places getting the most ‘Bang for their Buck’ on property taxes, making their second consecutive appearance in the study's top 10. In addition to property taxes, the study analyzed the quality of local schools and the local crime rates to find where people were seeing the most value.
Cullman ranked eighth in the same study in 2015.
The study took into account crime rate, school value and lowest average property tax.
“Our study aims to find the places in the United States where people are getting the most for their property tax dollars. To do this we looked at school rankings, crime rates and property taxes for every county,” said the company.
SmartAsset says that, “as a way to measure the quality of schools, we calculated the average math and reading/language arts proficiencies for all the school districts in the country. Within each state, these schools were then ranked between 1 and 10 (with 10 being the best) based on those average scores.”
Violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents were calculated for each county, then used with the school ranking to calculate a “community score,” which is a ratio of the school rank to the combined crime rate per 100,000 residents.
“We used the number of households, median home value and average property tax rate to calculate a per capita property tax collected for each county.”
Finally, the company says, “we calculated a tax value by creating a ratio of the community score to the per capita property tax paid. This shows us the counties in the country where people are getting the most bang for their buck, or where their property tax dollars are going the furthest.”
The full study results, methodology, and interactive map can be found here: https://smartasset.com/taxes/alabama-property-tax-calculator?year=2016#map
SmartAsset is a financial technology company that provides transparent, automated, and accurate advice on big personal finance decisions. SmartAsset helps users arrive at the best answers and make the best decisions concerning their finances. The company is based in New York City, and is backed by investors including Y Combinator, Javelin Venture Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, Quotidian Ventures, Peterson Ventures and more.
