MillageRate.com

In the name of lowering property taxes, the State Legislature is moving toward passage of SB-83, which would double the homestead exemption from the current $2,000 to $4,000. Like HR-1 (the assessment “freeze”), SB-83 is just another manifestation of the incredible ignorance that characterizes many of our state representatives.

Any depression of a jurisdiction’s tax digest increases the pressure on local officials to increase the millage rate to balance the budget. An increased rate can wipe out any benefit that an exemption might have produced.

State-level politicians get a pass while local pols are forced to answer to the voters for the “tax increase.”

Even worse, the increased residential exemption will further shift the cost of government to the non-residential portion of the tax digest… the same businesses that we desperately want and need to attract to Georgia.

Check here to monitor the bill’s progress and find out how your representative voted.

For any number of other school districts in the state, that might not present a particularly vexing problem, as long as school board members and other school officials in those districts are willing to take the political heat for raising the local property tax millage rate. The millage rate is a fractional multiplier applied to the value of a piece of property to determine at a tax bill. Raising the millage rate can compensate for any drops in property value.

Editorial: Homestead bill trouble for Clarke BOE | Athens Banner-Herald