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By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
“•WMwnnock New. SUIT Writer
Forest land owners and fanners with agricultural land in the poorest soil categories will pay a few cents more in taxes next year through the county’s use value assessment program, but orchards will continue to be taxed at values far below the state’s recommendations.
Before an audience of forty-some farmers and orchardists at last Thursday’s work session, the Rappahannock supervisors upped the assessment on forest land from $200 to $260 per acre and dropped the bottom of the agricultural schedule, eliminating the two poorest soil classifications which had assessments as low as $50 an acre.
Under the land use program, qualifying property is assessed for tax purposes at its production value rather than its fair market or speculative value. The assessments are based on soil types which have been given use values through extensive surveys by VPI’s State Land Evaluation Advisory Committee . The comittee determines the actual worth of crops and timber produced by an acre of land in each of eight soil classifications; that figure is the use value assessment recommended by the committee.
But counties do not have to adopt the committee’s exact recommendations on assessed value for farm, forest and horticultural land and can instead modify the range of values, taldng into account poltical considerations as well as local conditions affecting farm, timber and orchard production.
Commissioner of Revenue Beverly Atkins noted that assessment values for the land use program may be changed only during a county’s overall reassessment, which comes every six years and is currently being conducted in Rappahannock.
She pointed out that SLEAC’s recommendations on productive worth of agricultural land have declined since 1984. “I assume the drought has influenced that,” she
said, adding that crop production obviously drops during a drought period. “Values are definitely tied to production.”
In 1981, SLEAC recommended assessments of $620 per acre for class 2 soU, $470 for class 3, $380 for class 4, $280 for class 5, $230 for class 6, $170 for class 7 and $50 for
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