I wouldn’t say Merchantville has low taxes. They actually have fairly high taxes. The houses are smaller and valued less than Cherry Hill so the overall tax amount is less, but the rate for Merchantville is probably top 30 in the state.
New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the country. Here is a complete list of town by town property tax rates in New Jersey.
suburbs101.com
Camden County has the highest tax rate of all counties in NJ. There are a ton of very small towns/boroughs in Camden County (Merchantville, Oaklyn, Mt. Ephriam, Barrington, Lawnside, Magnolia, Hi-Nella, Laurel Springs, Pine Hill, Clementon etc.)
All of these towns/boroughs for the most part have their own police, fire, EMS, middle schools, superintendents, public works etc. so the tax rate tends to be very high to pay for all of the services. Some of these towns share services with neighboring towns and there’s been a big push in a lot of these towns to move more and more towards shared services (with push back as well - these towns are very protective over things such as their fire departments).
There are many towns in Camden County that are so small they don’t even have their own high school as they don’t have the population or the tax base.
For example - Barrington, Lawnside and Merchantville all send to Haddon Heights high school (Merchantville is a couple towns over and doesn’t even border Haddon Heights so this is an odd one). Oaklyn sends to Collingswood. Mt. Ephriam sends to Audubon. Magnolia, Hi Nella, Laurel Springs send to Sterling etc.
A lot of the public high schools in Camden County where all of these towns send to are pretty meh for the tax rates that are paid. Unless you are living in a super wealthy town (Haddonfield) or a bigger middle/upper middle class town (Cherry Hill, Voorhees) the public high schools are pretty meh overall for the taxes that are paid.
This is why I think the catholic/private schools in the area are still doing fairly well (Paul VI, Camden Catholic, Gloucester Catholic, Bishop Eustace)…although Eustace did almost close a few years ago.