Bills are Bugged on my Lot

I just started a new character on the Tangled Flat lot in Sulani. When my first bills came they were surprisingly large, around $800. I had to sell the tv I recently bought in order to pay for it. I thought this was strange because I recently moved a  veteran family with high-end items into a much bigger lot and built a four story house there, and their bills were only around $400.

So I looked at the bills breakdown, and discovered that the new character had some massive tax penalties, around $550 worth. I looked at my other characters, and no other character had tax penalties at all, so this only seemed more strange.

The reason the game gave for the penalties in bullet point was for Bill Surcharge Items. This seemed odd, because this was a new, stock house with nothing unusual. So I started eye-dropping items to see if anything had any outstanding descriptions, and still nothing was unusual. While experimenting with deleting items and checking the bills, it seemed like any item that had the "Eco Footprint Green" trait was contributing to this penalty for some reason.

I started experimenting more and that wasn't the weirdest part.

If I saved the lot and placed it on another lot that didn't have this tax penalty issue, it would bring the tax penalty issue with it. However, if I demolished the house at Tangled Flat, and started building a new house, even with the exact same items, they would no longer incur any tax penalties (and I have to demolish the whole thing first; deleting an item and replacing it on its own doesn't fix the penalty unless I bulldoze the entire thing).

At first I thought that would be my workaround: rebuild the house manually as best as I can. However, I then noticed a secondary bug. Even after demolishing the house and starting to build a new one, when I go to world view, it's still showing the original house at Tangled Flat instead of what's actually on that plot.

For the record, while experimenting, I also noticed a tax penalty problem in Ohan'ali Town at Lagoon Look and Kin-Ship, but not at Chieftain's Villa.

Also, a couple of other notes. The "Build Mode Items Grant Gameplay Effects" Gameplay Option doesn't seem to affect this problem one way or the other. I also don't own the Eco Lifestyle expansion.

Edit: I decided to just deal with the bills for now, only to discover another layer to this. The tax penalty seems to be increasing constantly over time, even if my Sim doesn't do anything but sit around for the day.

Edit 2: Since I now discovered that the penalty increases over time, I wondered if, in the situation where I demolished the house and removed the penalty, if the penalty would return over time. I attempted to pass the time four different ways from a fresh save each time. One with just an empty room, one with only Eco Footprint items, one with only Water items, and one with only Power items. In all cases, the penalty did not seem to return.

This seems to be another reason that demolishing the house and starting over is the best option. It's a shame there's that secondary bug, because while it's infinitely more innocuous on the surface, without knowing why it's happening it may be just as much trouble down the road.