$100.00 of value, a $300,000.00 house and lot pays

$100.00 of value, a $300,000.00 house and lot pays $2,400.00 per year in taxes. The wealthy retiree also pays $2,400.00 in taxes, but doesn’t send any children to school. The farmer also pays $2,400.00 in taxes on his house, but also pays some, albeit reduced, tax on his land that is in land use. (Remember, cows don’t ride school buses). So, who is it that is costing the county the most here?

While it is clear that it is the number of desks needed in schools that have the most effect on tax rates, there is still the argument that all the land should pay the same tax, based on its fair market value, and therefore reduce the average amount each landowner should pay. But this argument ignores the experience of the past, and ignores the adverse effect of taxing the open land at its fair market value.

There is no question that the “highest and best use” of land in Rappahannock County is for residential development. There is also no question that farming in Rappahannock County is at best a marginal enterprise. So, what happens if you tax all the farm land at its value for housing development? The farmer finds it even more difficult to maintain the land in agriculture, or in forest, and therefore he will sell it for residential development more quickly. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where I’m going with this argument, but before I do that, consider the following:

In the 1980s, when 1 worked for PEC, we found that the “net public costs” (the amount of public money needed to support the land at its present use) for agricultural land, in land use taxation, was $0.11 per $1.00 of taxes it paid. The net public costs for the average dwelling (with 1.5 children per house), was $1.33 per $1.00 it paid in taxes. The reason is obvious...the only support needed for the agricultural land was an occasional fire department call for a brush fire, and a small portion of the costs for the court and county offices. To use the bovine analogy again, cows don’t commit crimes, or sue people, or file for building permits, either. But of course, every house that had a child of school age costs the county thousands of dollars every year. And what about those “wealthy retirees”, which Mr. Kossler opined as costing the . county money in revenue sharing and so forth? How many children are they putting on the school buses?

So, let me go hack, to what happens if the farmer sells his land for development. I don’t think it is unreasonable to think that the land will grow houses now, instead of hay, or