NJ Tax Crush: Taxes, other bills drive families out of state

Asbury Park Press reports on the effects of high taxation

With their property tax bill at $11,500 and rising, Kirsten and Keith Cuillard decided that if their elected officials weren't going to take decisive action, they'd have to themselves.

So in June, the Middletown couple packed up their three young children and all their possessions and moved, following a well-worn trail south from Monmouth County to the suburbs of Charlotte, N.C.

Joining them were Kirsten's 68-year-old mother, who also had just sold her home in Middletown, and Kirsten's brother, who moved to the Charlotte area from Middletown last year.

"I would have loved to have stayed in New Jersey," explained Kirsten, 41, (left) who works from home as a Disney vacation planner. "It's just that the cost of living was killing us."

The Cuillards' new, center hall colonial, still under construction in the town of Harrisburg while they live nearby in Kirsten's mother's new town house, has six bedrooms, a finished basement and 6,000 square feet of living space — almost twice what they had in Middletown.

The house will cost them $406,000 — $164,000 less than what their Middletown home sold for. And here's the kicker: The property taxes will be about $3,200 a year, a 72 percent reduction.

A Blue America story. This is called the Laffer Curve in action: also known as the diminishing law of returns of taxation . You'll want to read the entire article because their are lessons beyond New Jersey from this one.