Question

Property taxes in a particular district are 4% of the purchase price of a home every year. If you just purchased a $250,000 home, what is the present value of all the future property tax payments.

Answer 1

Answer:

Assume the interest rate used for discounting is 5%.

Then, the present value of all the future property tax payments is $200,000.

Explanation:

We have the annual property tax payment is calculated as: Purchased price * tax rate = 250,000 * 4% = $10,000.

The tax payment will form a perpetuity of $10,000 each ( that is: C = 10,000). We apply the formula for calculating present value of perpetuity with assumption that discount rate is 5% to come up with the answer as below:

PV = C/i = 10,000/5% = $200,000.

So, the answer is $200,000.