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By DAPHINK HlTCHI\SON
H.’ippahannork Staff VI ritrr Everyone complains about high taxes but in Rappahannock County the complaints have little basis in fact, at least as far as local property taxes are concerned.
Rappahannock’s landowners should be bragging instead of complaining, judging by data released this week by the Virginia Education Association's Research Service.
According to VEA’s "Real Estate Taxes and True Values In Virginia," county landowners were blessed with the second lowest tax rate in the state in 1980. The report gives Rappahannock’s average effective true tax rate for that year as 19 cents per $100. beaten only by Cumberland County’s 13 cents.
The levy fell far below the Virginia average of 81 cents. Rappahannock taxpayers came out way ahead when compared with neighboring jurisdictions as well. Rates per $100 for 1980 in nearby counties were 51 cents in Culpeper, 40 cents in Fauquier, 43 cents in Warren, 40 cents in Orange and 39 cents in Madison.
While Rappahannock’s true tax rate was the second lowest in Virginia, the county’s median assessment ratio ranked at the very bottom of the list at 4.4 percent.
To arrive at that figure, the 1980 assessed value for a piece of property was divided by the selling price for each report. “The use of the median ratio has been deemed to be the best measure of a locality's true assessmen-sales ratio because the raio is unaffected by distortions caused by large sales or ‘extreme’ ratios at' either end of the spectrum and especially those at the'
87.5%