The following are the taxes charged b the PA State Taxes department-

1. Personal Income Tax

Pennsylvania is the only state in the United States of America to have a flat rate of tax of about 3.07% on individual income without any personal exemptions. Taxes are collected for municipal, county and school district. In spite of all this, the people of Pennsylvania, who thrive on a very modest income, qualify for the Tax Forgiveness Credit. April 15 or the next weekend is the last date for all the returns in the PA state.

2. Sales Tax

Sales taxes, too, are as high as 6% in Pennsylvania on taxable services and goods. One percent of sales tax is collected for taxable services and goods from the states of Allegheny and Philadelphia. Items like apparels, textbooks, drugs, raw food, residential heating fuels and sales for resale are the major ones exempted from sales taxes.

3. Personal and Real Property Taxes

Typically, the state of Pennsylvania does not impute taxes on personal properties or real estates. These kinds of taxes are meant for counts, school districts and municipalities normally. These districts imposes taxes on personal property and real estate so it is better to know what school district or county you live in.

Municipalities are permitted to impede taxes on the real estates which do not cross 30 mills on the stipulated value of property and without the special allowance of the court. To know more about this you must visit the Pennsylvania Department of Education website.

Qualified seniors and disabled persons are eligible for the State Property Rent / Tax rebate program. The PA department of Revenue administers this while it is assisted by Pennsylvania Lottery. Taxpayers are allowed to rebuilt amounts up to a $ 650 a year. This is for the money they had earlier paid for rent or property taxes the previous year. The employers are expected to withhold this amount of money from the employees which they get from their municipal services and emergency imposed by the school districts and municipalities.

4. Estate Taxes and inheritance

Inheritance taxes are collected by the state of Pennsylvania. These taxes have an estate taxes based on decedent's gross estate and restricted to the credit of the state death taxes which is allowed on federal tax return. However, the Keystone state's estate taxes are not imposed on this since federal credit for all these state estate taxes have been phased out completely.

5. Few more Facts on PA State Taxes

The facility of checking the status of all the refunds oh the PA state taxes in the website is provided to all the taxpayers. The department of Pennsylvania has a list of employers with stagnating tax accounts to collect heir proportional state taxes which are still to be paid. Anything earned outside the state of Pennsylvania is not taxable with respect to active full time military pay.

Source by Abhishek Agarwal

It is not uncommon for real estate agents, mortgage loan officers, buyers and sellers to inquire as to how much the seller is allowed to pay in contributions on a conventional mortgage loan. Any closing costs that are normally paid by the borrower are considered contributions if they are not paid by the borrower. The seller, builder, developer, real estate agent or any other interested party to the transaction, including any affiliates, may pay these contributions.

The maximum allowable contributions from interested parties are based upon the lesser of the purchase price or appraised value, property type and the down payment amount.

Primary residences and second homes with less than 10% down allow contributions of 3%. If the buyer pays between 10 and 25% down the contributions are limited to 6%. Down payments of more than 25% allows contributions up to 9% on conforming loan amounts but non-conforming loans are limited to 6%. The maximum contribution is 6% for conforming 80/20 and 90/10 on primary residence and second home financing.

The contribution on investment properties is limited to 2% regardless of amount paid down.

Contributions towards any of the following are included in the maximum permitted limits:

1. Closing Costs

2. Discount points

3. Commitment fees

4. Origination Fees

5. Mortgage insurance premium

6. Discount Points for temporarily or permanently lower the borrowers monthly payment or interest rate.

7. Any other transfer charges normally paid by the borrower, eg, transfer taxes, tax stamps, title insurance, surveys, assessment, and recording and attorney fees.

8. Homeowner association fees for future dues.

If there are excess contributions, a downward adjustment to the property's sales price must be made to reflect the amount of any contributions that exceed the maximum contribution limits. The LTV / TLTV ratio must therefore be calculated based upon the lesser of the reduced sales price or the appraised value.

The cost of any personal property, eg, furniture, decorator items, automobiles or other "giveaways", must always be deducted from the property's sales price regardless of the amount of any other contributions.

A cash credit, cash rebate, incentive or inducement / enticement to purchase from the seller, builder, or developer must also always be deducted from the property's sales price. Examples may include but are not limited to: excessive costs, commissions, or seller financing at below market interest rates.

A new LTV / TLTV must be calculated whenever the property's sales price is reduced. The LTV / TLTV is based on the lesser of the adjusted sales price or the appraised value.

Typically, a short list of personal property may come with a house. Most built-in appliances (such as stove, refrigerator, dishwasher), window covers and carpeting, are usually considered to be fixtures so no adjustment to the purchase price is needed.

Sometimes personal property may be left for convenience and has minimal value (eg, pool cleaning equipment, lawn mowers, picnic tables and patio sets). Generally, if personal property equals less than 2% of the value of the property or has a value of less than $ 500 it is not considered a contribution.

You can see how important it is that Loan Officers and Real Estate Agents understand the limits of concessions. Sales contracts and mortgage loans should be structured accordingly. A lack of training on our part can cause major frustrations for the buyer and seller.

Source by Connie Sanders

I am not sure if we developed “whole-tailing” originally but one of our mentor students named it for us. This selling of retail properties is the combination of the names wholesaling and retailing and is specifically targeted at conventional end-buyers who pay retail prices for their homes..

Basically the only properties that are purchased to fit this selling technique are ones where the amounts of repairs are limited to one or two weeks of patching and painting – no major work what-so-ever. If major work does need to be done, the property is patched and painted and sold as a “Handyman Special”.

While I have been doing this type of limited rehabbing since 1975, I didn’t realize its significance until a mentor student approached me with the proposition, “Is it possible to buy properties at 80% – 85% of the price listed on the MLS and re-sell them at full market value?” I had done it for years by prospecting for expiring listings because the homeowners were almost always blaming the realtor for the lack of buyers.

In reality, it was often the realtor’s fault because he “sold the listing” by promising a market price that was too high and the homeowners wouldn’t back off the initial listing price as the listing agent expected him to do. And there are plenty of times a homeowner would be totally at fault for not reducing an unrealistic price they wanted. The other complaint from homeowners was that the listing agent never brought a buyer by the property and would never do an “Open House”.

The most successful realtors do not sell homes, they sell listings and let other realtors find the buyers – that’s the reality of the industry. They also do not generally do Open Houses because they don’t work very often. Of course there are the smart realtors who use Open Houses to build their buyers list, but this is tedious.

We recently had a mentor student’s first property up for sale in an exclusive neighborhood of $300,000 homes. He had bought it wholesale from the homeowner and remodeled it. The weekend we had his sale there was a realtor having an Open House about 10 houses away. The realtor had put out about twenty red and white Open House signs throughout the neighborhood. We put out fourteen signs and waited to see what happened. As expected the traffic started within ten minutes and at the end of the first day the realtor doing the Open House came by to see our property.

He explained he had two couples come through and neither made an offer. We showed him our sign-in ledger and had 104 people sign the ledger and four offers on the property. He said it was impossible but was quiet when he saw the offers but still said he couldn’t believe it. By Sunday at the close of the sale we had 173 people sign-in and about 20 who wouldn’t leave their contact info. The realtor came by again and said he had 8 individuals the entire weekend and no offers.

This realtor saw our signage, watched as the traffic jams came and went in front of our property, and he still didn’t believe it. He even complained that his listing was in better shape, larger and was being offered at a lower price than ours! I gave him the address of our selling system on the internet but I know he didn’t bother to look at it because I looked later to see if he purchased it.

This was an example of a “whole-tail” deal for the student and he netted over $80,000 for his effort. I have to tell you that the biggest problem was getting local lenders to believe there wasn’t fraud involved. One loan underwriter spoke to me and asked “How much did you have in repairs?” I explained that it didn’t matter because all the lender should be concerned about was the borrower and the value of the property today.

She finally said “I don’t believe a seller would give their house away so much below market value!” I graciously explained that motivated sellers are not concerned with price especially when they may need to put more money into the property before they can sell it. Despite the borrower/buyer having a commitment letter with no contingencies from the lender, she declined the loan.

This process of buying “slightly distressed” properties that are no longer listed on the MLS and patching and painting them works very well. The student I mentioned did five of these deals with me as a partner in a one year period and does tons of them in this frazzled market still. His key to doing so many entails his using the proprietary selling system I developed and even when the property is sold the first weekend, he re-sells it over and over again. The additional buyers become contingent buyers in the event his previous buyer can’t get financing or changes his mind. All of the people who leave their contact info are alerted to the next sale he has coming and become a part of his “Preferred Buyers List”. He then has buyers waiting for his special sales and he has the time to then work with credit challenged buyers.

Source by Dave Dinkel