We just got back from the open book held in the local town hall. We got the reassessment notice in early June and found that the value of our property had increased 300%. Sounds good, doesn't it? Not if you are planning to hold the land, rather than keeping it for an investment to sell when the price is high enough. Not if you are trying to preserve a part of the Earth from development and eventual suburban sprawl.
We found out that mill rate (the amount of tax per $1000 of valuation) did go down with the reassessment but it still means that our taxes go up about 80%. Right now we have a pretty high mortgage but with the rise in taxes next year we will be paying an additional amount equal to more than half of our yearly mortgage in property taxes. At the moment I am pretty depressed. Some of the options available to us are sell off part of the land to pay off a big enough chunk of the mortgage so that the mortgage goes down enough to balance out the taxes. The problem with that is in a few years when they reassess the value again we might be in the same fix again, let alone that we would have failed to protect it, lost something special (like our cave, for example, though I think the land is special in and of itself.) There is a managed forest plan which does set land aside for special tax breaks but it is binding for 25 years with huge huge penalties for withdrawing before then, requires an approved forest management plan that involves timber productions and logging of areas as they mature. It looks to be aimed at giving large corporate tree farms major tax breaks but if you are trying to protect the land it really doesn't work in your favor.
So the large corporate farms get these tax breaks and the individual pays the taxes. What sense does that make, I ask you? Ok, it makes perfect sense if you can afford to make major contributions to a political candidate or can afford a lobbyist to work for the legislations that allows you the best deals and screws the people. Sigh… I am not a happy camper.
Copyright © 2000 Kyril Oakwind