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Land Use Taxation
At least two members of the Board of Supervisors are interested in reopening the issue of land use taxation.
Hampton District representative Mike Massie has collected statistics that show owners of houses and small lots have seen their taxes rise far faster than owners of raw land.
Jackson District representative Ellis Bingham claims that most of the land in the land use taxation program is owned by non residents. He has frequently said that this means residents are subsidizing outside real estate investors.
Nothing in the law allows the supervisors to treat nonresidents differently from residents in levying taxes.
The laws also require that assessments of land in the land-use program be left unchanged, as other assessments are left unchanged, between general reassessments. Only changes in the actual use of land or changes in buildings on property can change the assessment between reassessments.
Emotions run very high at the time of reassessments, making it a difficult time to make changes that will significantly increase taxes for anyone. If the Board of Supervisors intends to dramatically change the land-use taxation system, such as requiring that qualifying land be in agricultural districts that cannot be developed for 10 years, the decision needs to be made in advance of a general assessment and then put into place at the time of the reassessment.
Following this debate should be interesting. However, we would remind Mr. Massie and Col. Bingham that raw land, whether owned by residents or non-residents is not causing taxes to increase. '
People, whether they are full-time or part-time residents, demand the services—schools, waste disposal, law enforcement, even libraries and recreation—that are driving costs of county government higher.
A look around us in any direction clearly shows that development causes taxes to rise.
Mr. Massie said the real estate tax rate is 50 percent higher this year than it would be if there were no land use program. It is easy enough to arrive at that figure by adding in the value of land exempt from taxation through the land use program and figuring what tax rate would raise the same amount of money on the higher value of real estate.
However, this says nothing about what the taxes would have been if more houses had been built on that land.
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