Land use helps us all

Land use helps us all

Once again, land-use taxation is under attack.

From some quarters of the county come cries that the policy of offering a reduced tax rate for agricultural land unfairly shifts the burden of taxes onto those residents who cannot, or choose not to, put their property into the program.

That is true, as far as it goes.

Land-use taxation is designed to ease the tax burden on owners of farmland by allowing them to pay taxes of the use value of the property rather than its market value.

In other words, the land-use argument goes, if a farmer is asked to pay taxes on the value his land would bring if he sold it for development, he is more likely to do that rather than try to keep farming.

Land-use taxation allows the farmer to reduce his tax burden by paying for the value his land has in its present use, farming, rather than its potential value if it were developed.

Yes, the lost tax revenue must be made up. And yes, other taxpayers not in the land-use program make up the difference in their tax bills.

But those who complain about land use unfairly adding to their tax bills ignore the other part of the equation: the tax burden added when farms are subdivided and replaced by residential housing.

According to a study done in 1985 by the Piedmont Environmental Council, residential property in Rappahannock County demands $1.20 in services for each $1 it generates in tax revenue — a 20-cent shortfall.

That deficit is made up, according to the PEC study, by other land uses. Farms, forested tracts and open space require only 17 cents in services for each dollar of tax collected, leaving the county with an extra 83 cents to spend elsewhere. Industrial and commercial land, too, provides the county with a tax windfall, using only 53 cents in services for each dollar in tax revenue collected.