Do you see the inherent contradiction between the first sentence in your post and the rest of it?

I have a bicycle, wide screen TV, and a multitude of furniture: All of which are my property, so why don't I pay annual property tax on them? Since when are automobiles "real property?"

I have received far more tickets in NOVA than DC, and they are inevitably higher priced than the District. And I have known far more people to get towed in the NOVA burbs than DC. As for car breakins, I had my first one last year after 19 years in the city. And now I'm going to have to visit your neighborhood to rob as many cars and houses as possible since you guys are so naive and such country bumpkins.

It's funny that you NOVA country bumpkins are such victims of crime. I can't say I know any DC residents who have been mugged (unless you count federal tax and no representation). You guys must have a big "SUCKER" tattoo on your foreheads.

(I will admit that I like the fact that VA allows for concealed carry permits)

I think the point was not that all owned property is taxed annually, but some is. Like real estate. So there is a precedent for annual car tax.

But in the right places of NoVA AND DC, it can be a moot point. Live near the Metro and without a car, and avoid all car "taxes" - whether they be gas taxes, registration, parking fees, or annual fees.

Good point. I live 2 1/2 blocks to the metro, so it saves me countless gallons of gas, parking tickets, and garage charges. My point would be that living within walking distance to the metro is far more feasible/convenient in DC than it is in even Arlington and Alexandria. Cars are much more a part of life out in NOVA than in the city.

Sadly, this sort of condescending outlook is prevalent amongst DC residents. Apparently to them crossing the river is like descending into some rube-filled wasteland (Godspeed to those brave residents heading to DCA!).

NOVA is not a homogeneous area. Areas adjoining DC like Rosslyn are really just extensions of the urban environment, with similar exorbitant rents. As you move further from the city into actual suburbs (like Falls Church), you will find strip malls and such, but you'll also find large immigrant communities with a variety of accompanying stores and restaurants, with nary a "bumpkin" in sight (and it's still metro accessible). You have to get out to places like Ashburn/Sterling to get places that will remind you of the hit show "Suburgatory". To actually find "bumpkins", you'll need to head out to the Blue Ridge (about 60 miles from DC).

It's amusing yet annoying that DCites manage to lump these different areas into one "surburban/bumpkin/wasteland". Just a heads up to the OP, if you choose to live in NOVA, you'll have to deal with this stigma from our more enlightened neighbors.

Nah, we city slickers do it primarily to get a rise out of you suburban folk. And with the big inferiority complex you NOVA guys have, it's always easy to get a bite.

[Interestingly enough, this little goading isn't usually aimed at Marylanders. Must be the fact that Maryland is connected to the District by land borders???]

Arlington is pretty much indistinguishable from DC in terms of livability. In fact, in many ways it exceeds DC in terms of urban amenities. Yes, not all parts are Metro adjacent, but the same is true for DC - both have very usable feeder and transit bus systems.

and, wjhen you are in nova, you are never lonesome. you have lots and lots of traffic to keep you company.

Mass is another car tax state. In the good old days the local government would assess your worldly possessions (like furniture) and tax it every year. I guess that at some point they gave up on that in the early 1900s (1940s or 1950s?) and it devolved into an automobile tax. I also know that it was common in Mass that you would bribe the town clerk and he would lose your file.

I moved from Mass to VA around the time that they were getting rid of the car tax in 1998-2002, which was a key plank of VA's Republican governor at the time. Unfortunately the new Democrat governor in 2002 stopped the final cut from being enacted and it remains that you get a 70% (?) rebate on the "real" amount owed.

However, in Fairfax County the rate is 4.5%, which is very high so I still paid more (with the 70% discount) than in Mass where it was the same (I think) as the real estate tax. Also the assessed value was much lower for the same car in Mass than in VA.

The rebate is also capped at $20,000 so if you have a ~$50k car then you are paying a pretty penny.

p.s. It's 5% in Arlington and they still have stickers that set you back another $30. They are also more "progressive" and provide full refund on the first $3k valuation and then apply a reduced rebate from $3k to $20k.

Oh yeah, I totally forgot that DC bans cars and traffic. It's a land-locked Venice!

Even the walkable Metro corridors in Arlington aren't known for their charming historic architecture. The county was largely rural until the New Deal; there are "maybe a dozen" pre-1930 houses in the entire county, per their historic preservation staffer. Still, you'll pay as much per square foot for real estate there as you will in all but the choicest bits of the District.

Here's a study that compared the relative tax burdens of the three states for different theoretical households. DC comes out ahead, although the commenters correctly point out that it assumes that people drive rather nice cars (which even "ghetto"-dwellers do around here).

If you want to take issue with the aesthetics of Arlington and other inner DC suburbs, that's fine. But do it on the merits of individual buildings and architecture, not their age. To equate "dull" with lack of historic buildings just smacks of a kind of rigid (and largely anti-urban) conservatism. There are plenty of poorly designed, low density, and ugly "historic" structures, plus they are often made with less robust materials, are full of substances now considered toxic, and are far less environmentally friendly.

Those studies are what I referred to earlier. They were made by a DC interest group to promote DC living, so take them with the proper grain of salt - they make subtle changes, including the car ownership assumptions, to tweak the findings in favor of DC.

Hm, no need to take it so personally, particularly since now you're getting into the history of my profession. Cities exist in four dimensions, and personally I like places that have a long history -- even turning down an offer to move to the west coast on largely those grounds. Sure, that's purely subjective and perhaps unusual in a society that's always racing towards the latest frontier, but "character" is always subjective. I'm hardly an anti-modern snob; I live in Southwest (by far the least "charming" part of the District by every account), I'm a member of docomomo, and have gotten nearly excommunicated by some of the classical architecture folks for daring to speak up for modernism.

I'm not exactly alone in saying that Arlington's architecture just doesn't match the high quality of the planning:

Even if you completely remove car ownership -- and I have never owned a car -- the tax difference between DC and Virginia, particularly for the many people who pay more in sales/payroll taxes than income tax, isn't as great as many would think.

BTW, besides lead paint/pipes, there's not much about 19th century buildings that's toxic. Most of the toxic chemicals we worry about were most widely used in 20th century buildings.

Also, I find it mildly hilarious that I should be accused of being "anti-urban."