State Senator Chip Pearson has issued a press release to clarify just who is to blame for a significant jump in property tax bills this year. His publication exposes a primary problem with Georgia’s property tax code—state legislators who do not know what in the hell they are talking about.
If you want to know about effective property tax reform, don’t ask a politician. Check with a professional:
“Every state that has implemented this — California, Colorado, and Florida — has ended up with higher property taxes,” he said. “The perception behind this is crazy. Tax bills are dictated by budgets. You start freezing values and only updating recent sells or new construction and rates will go up.”
Dobbs said especially in a year when the state is cutting back allocations to counties for road paving, the idea of freezing values was poorly thought out. He said they are virtually guaranteeing that local government will be forced to raise tax rates to cover the loss from frozen values and fewer state grants.
Governor Sonny Perdue joins the ranks of the numerous elected officials who have no clue about what is wrong with Georgia’s property tax system, or how to fix it. We have written to excess about assessment caps; check out the archives:
Legislation Gov. Sonny Perdue signed into law on Wednesday makes sure of that. House Bill 233, sponsored by Rep. Ed Lindsey (R-Atlanta), prevents local governments from increasing the assessments used to calculate property taxes for three years, ending with the 2012 tax year.
[The following was sent to the author of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article here.]
What DeKalb did appears to be exactly CORRECT…. at least, if your interest is in fairly valuing property.
The consideration of foreclosures and other distressed sales does not produce a true market value; it does not contribute to equity and fairness in property taxation.
SB-55 not withstanding, DeKalb did the right thing when it considered available Fair Market Value sales over, or instead of, distressed sales in its valuation of property.
Democrat Senators Tim Golden (D-Valdosta) and Doug Stoner (D-Smyrna) have co-authored an editorial highlighting the foundational problem with HB-233, Rep. Edward Lindsey’s assessment cap legislation that passed the Senate yesterday and is headed for the Governor’s desk:
We do need to deal with rising property taxes in a responsible way. State government has actually been a big part of the problem – especially when it comes to shifting the burden to the local level. By handcuffing local governments through drastic funding cuts and unfunded mandates, the state has practically guaranteed that property taxes will go up, and go up they have.
We have railed against this harmful legislation for weeks, but our reasoned analysis fell on deaf ears. Although the two Senators failed to offer the only workable solution to the problems with Georgia’s tax code, they recognized that the State Legislature, with what “solution” it offers, usually just compounds the problem.
Erick at Peach Pundit questions just how committed to `tax relief` the two Democrats are. Neither Senator even voted when the time to oppose HB-233 came.
Valdosta Daily Times – Passing the buck to local governments is not ‘tax relief’
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