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  • What would happen if the Freehold & Jamesburg RR was never pulled up?

  • Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New Jersey
Pertaining to all railroading subjects, past and present, in New Jersey

Moderator: David

 #1592847  by Ken W2KB
 
New Jersey has a unique tax scheme applicable to railroad property. The State's official Handbook for New Jersey Assessors summarizes the process as follows "621. Railroad Property.
621.01 Assessor’s Responsibility.
Municipal assessors do not assess property used for railroad purposes.
However, real property owned by railroad companies, but not used for
railroad purposes, is assessed by the local assessor as of October 1 of the
pretax year in the same manner as the property of any other owner. The
State of New Jersey, Property Administration annually levies and assesses
railroad property for both property tax and franchise tax." A complete description can be found at pages 550-554 of the Handbook. https://www.state.nj.us/treasury/taxati ... ndbook.pdf
 #1592856  by CJPat
 
Don't forget, freight railroads are "private" (ignoring the stock trading aspect for the sake of this discussion). They are the only ones permitted to use it. Hence the railroad is taxed. The public is taxed for the roadways because the roads are open service to the public. And of course the public is further taxed via gasoline taxes. The public is also further taxed to cover NJT again because it is open to the public.

So in the end everybody is taxed for everything. Convenient, isn't it. Now discussion of what tax rates are used is a whole other discussion.
 #1599301  by JohnFromJersey
 
A very odd thing I saw on Historic Aerials is, when you look at topographic maps in the areas this line ran in, from Farmingdale-Sea Girt, the topographic maps still show that the tracks are there - even though they were pulled in 1964(?)

It wasn't until a topographic map from 1989 did they finally remove this line from it