this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2026
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Explain Like I'm Five

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Explain Like I am a child ... taxes. I get you pay taxes on goods you buy everyday. And you get said goods by paying a one time fee. But how come on a home after being paid off I still pay taxes...... (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by Patnou@lemmy.world to c/explainlikeimfive@lemmy.world
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I mean I paid for it like I would anything else I wanted. They charge a tax at checkout. So if I buy a house and pay the whole thing off, why do I still have to pay taxes on said house when I paid the whole agreed on price in full? It would be like me buying a six pack of beer I pay for it and tax at checkout. But then timely I have to keep paying taxes on the beer even though paid in full?

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[โ€“] lowspeedchase@lemmy.dbzer0.com 41 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That pack of beer doesn't require an entire infrastucture of services to maintain... when you buy a house (really the land) you are buying a stake in the community, a community that requires upkeep and you are agreeing to pay your share of the upkeep... think local law enforcement, fire departments, emergency medical services, infrastructure maintenance (sewer/water/roads), and I think the biggest one, local education.

[โ€“] Artisian@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I was curious, so I looked up a couple large cities. New york has a long budget document that really lacks charts, but talks a lot about schools. Somebody made this visualizer (which lacks pie charts! Why?!) for LA. Montreal has some reasonable pie charts for where their tax dollars go.