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In addition to the "property tax" that most people are familiar with for homes and real estate, there can sometimes be other forms of property tax for other forms of property. These taxes on a person's possessions are called personal property taxes and are usually calculated differently than the home property taxes above. The exact properties that will be subject to tax vary greatly from state to state and locality to locality. You can usually learn which forms of property can be taxed from your local tax authority. For example, in California, the Board of Equalization provides online documents covering this topic. Unlike home property taxes, many personal property taxes are not dependent on the value of the item being taxed (though some are.) A great example of this are taxes on cars in the form of registration renewal/tab fees: no matter whether you drive a brand-new luxury sedan or an ancient pickup truck with 200,000 miles on it, you must pay the same amount of money to renew your license plate tabs and keep driving legally. Many tax authorities will have information available online that can help you find your personal property taxes. For instance, this site lists car tax calculators for the states that offer them (scroll down to see the list.) For example, let's say that we want to buy a car in ABC County USA. Based on the state and local tax codes, we determine that we need to pay two expenses: a single one-time registration tax based on the value of the car and a recurring yearly fee to get our license tabs. If the car is worth $20,000 the registration tax rate is 1.5%, and the license tabs fee is $50, we'll owe 20,000 0.015 + 50 = 300 + 50 = $350. Personal property taxes aren't just applied to real, tangible property they can also extend to things like stocks, bonds, mutual fund shares, and so on. While some forms of personal property tax (like the vehicle registration fee example above) are quite common, taxes on intangible property can vary greatly from state to state, so check your local tax authority for more information. Sometimes, beneath a certain value, intangible property will be tax free. For instance, before 2007 in Florida, the first $250,000 of property (including most intangibles) was not subject to tax. In our example, let's say that, in addition to our car, we also have $300,000 of trusts that are eligible to be taxed. If the first $200,000 is tax-free in our state and, after that, the tax is 50 cents per $100 (0.5%) we'll need to pay 100,000 0.005 = $500. Once you know all of your personal property tax liabilities, just add them up to determine the total amount of money that you owe. As mentioned above, these sorts of taxes can vary greatly from place to places, so what you pay may not be similar to what someone living somewhere else pays. In our example, if we don't have any other personal property tax liabilities besides our car and our trusts, we'll simply need to pay 350 + 500 = $850.
Determine which possessions will be taxed. Find the tax or fee for each possession. Don't forget intangible possessions. Total your fees and taxes.