I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and I’ve come up with a theory. Now it’s only a theory and I’ve got no data on which to base it on, but I think I know one of the key reasons taxes are so low up north.

It’s all of the empty housing.

Houses and land are taxed, right? With the amount of people who have a cabin or trailer or just land up there for just vacationing or for hunting, yet keep their primary residence somewhere else, there is no need for services. Those folks have no need for schools. Their roads don’t get as much use so they last longer. There aren’t as many people so they can even save on law enforcement.

Now again, it’s just a theory, but it would be interesting to find the data as to how many dwellings were in each county and how many people were in each county. It’s a reasonable expectation that approximately the same amount of people who live in a house here, live in a house up north.