The tax man, they always want there unfair share of the costs.  So do your homework and find ways of not paying them any more than you need to?  For example lets say you just bought a piece of property in the county that you live in.  It has an old shack that is 800 square feet.  No one could ever live in it but you can sometimes use those 800 square feet to offset your taxes.  Here’s what I know about it (at least it works around here most of the time).

Ok so you want to build a 2,800 square foot house and you have this 800 square foot shack that you are going to demolish because it is just ugly.  Before you tear it down, you go the tax assessor’s office and tell them you want to replace this house with a new home that is 2,000 square feet larger.  They tell you that you can use the 800 square feet to deduct from you taxes.  Yes those 800 square feet is at the old tax rate offsetting your new taxes.  You may have just saved yourself thousands in taxes per year.  And you were just going to tear it down and forget about it.

Another little know fact is that if you are adding on to your home and you keep it below 500 square feet, (at least in this area you need to check this for your area) you will not be required to pay school taxes.  See for every square foot of addition you are required to pay school taxes which can be quite high, I have heard as high as six dollars a square foot.  That will add up very quickly.