Savvy Saving Bytes

There is no small talk during an IRS  tax audit. No chatting. No smiles. It’s been many years since my first (and only) tax audit but I well remember the deadening atmosphere of that IRS office. Up till then I had been in and out of the colorful offices of newspapers, publishing houses, advertising agencies [...]

Before exploring the country’s lowest sales taxes, I always assumed New York was the primary sales tax monster, hitting us up for 8.875% sales tax* every time we New Yawkas made a purchase. But lo and behold, another state turns out to be an even bigger tax biter: the gentle state of Tennessee charges its [...]

Impatiently waiting for the real estate market to recover from the recession, my niece, spurred on by the $8,000 government tax credit for new homebuyers, finally jumped in and bought herself a house. Happily for her, she’ll be paying property taxes in Virginia, one of the twenty states that have the lowest property tax rates [...]

If you are considering buying a home and wondering how much of a difference there is between the highest and lowest property taxes in the country, here’s the per capita* low-down. Alabama has the lowest property tax in the USA, but if you buy a home in New Jersey, which has the highest property tax, [...]

There once lived a man who was, is and always shall be The King of Frugal Mountain. Born in New England, and a close friend of Emerson the poet, Henry David Thoreau lived in Concord, Massachusetts, where living close to the bone was considered a worthy path. But Thoreau, a Harvard graduate and aspiring writer, [...]