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The Piedmont Environmental Council, brandishing the results of its recent study on the fiscal impacts of major land uses in Rappahannock County, claims to have answered once and for all the question of who carries the tax burden in the county.
In an article opposite this page, PEC staff writer Daphne Hutchinson writes: “The argument over who is paying what continues unnecessarily. (The PEC study)...shows that farmers and owners of forest and open space land are paying their own way (in taxes) AND part of the homeowner’s, despite use value taxation.”
In Hutchinson’s article, the point is repeatedly made that farmers and owners of open space land pay more in taxes than they get back in services. The difference subsidizes residential land use, according to the PEC study.
The study claims that farmers shoulder the tax burden, not because they pay more in taxes, but because they get less for the taxes they pay. That point is an oddity in the traditional discussion of taxation. It has never been the American way to tax real estate, or much of anything else, on the basis of what services will be directly returned to the individual taxpayer. Real estate taxes are, and have been, progressive. Thus people pay on the basis of what they have and what the community needs. If we, the public, have never felt justified in taxing according to what the individual returns will be, then why, on that very basis, should we determine who carries the tax burden?
After reviewing the PEC study, people without children in either of the county’s public schools may begin to wonder what return they’re getting for all the tax dollars spent on education. Are those people subsidizing adults with school-age children? Indeed they are, according to the rationale of the PEC study.
We don’t believe that adults without children in school subsidize adults with children in school, any more than we believe that owners of open space land subsidize people in residential areas. People pay taxes on the basis of their assets, not to get an individual return, but to ensure the health of a community.
Are people with open space
90.8%