Ga State Sen. Chip Rogers wants to change property tax system

Today, I read an article by Georgia State Senate Majority leader, Chip Rogers in the Rome News-Tribune.

This article is also at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, and the Savannah Morning News.

Georgia’s property tax system is a broken relic of a bygone agrarian-based economy. It fails every test of what constitutes good tax policy. It is not transparent, it is not easy to understand, it is not fair, it is not flat and, worst of all, it does not facilitate accountability. The most logical plan would be to scrap this 19th-century taxation model and move to one designed for a 21st-century economy. Sadly, few in elected office are willing to embrace this much-needed change, so the least we can do is add accountability. Property tax assessment caps offer real accountability.

Mr. Rogers,

You are completely wrong in your facts, logic and conclusions, and your proposed alternative, is more detrimental to our communities than our current system.

Property taxation has provided common services for the local communities for 8000 years. Before we had money, or writing, farmers paid portions of their crops to provide for the construction of roads, irrigation, charity for the poor, and defense of the community. Property tax records predate the earliest written codes of law and religion.

Fairness and accountability are the cornerstones of the property tax concept. I challenge you, Mr. Rogers, to compare the simplicity, accountability, and courses of redress available to property owners in the property tax system to the State Income tax and Federal Income tax systems.

In our property tax system 99% of the revenue raised is spent within OUR communities, with budgets by OUR elected officials. The local community has the responsibility of holding their elected officials to task.  The valuation process provides an entire course of appeals for property owners who feel they have been valued unfairly. And it is not some government employee who has the final say on an opinion of value, as you suggested, but rather a board or jury of other local homeowners who make the final say.

Let’s return to your scenario of the two 10 acre lots. You forgot to mention, that Mr. Smith has the opportunity to file for homestead exemption, which in many counties freezes the valuation of his property and increases the exemption as his property appreciates. You also forgot to mention the mandatory roll-back of the millage rate countywide to offset increased assessments based only on appreciation.  Likewise, it is only fair that as the value of Mr. Smith’s property increases along with all of the other properties, Mr. Smith should pay his fair share, based on a fair market assessment of the value of his property.  But you also failed to realize, that Mr. Smith’s 10 acres, and the 20 half acre lots are now in two different classes of property types, and would not be comparable to each other. And there are other options available to Mr. Smith, such as a conservation covenant which receives preferential treatment on a promise not to develop his property for 10 years, or that Mr. Smith has the opportunity to object to the valuation of his property under all of these situations with the burden of proof being on the government to justify their opinion and compare the fairness to other properties.

No, Mr. Rogers, our system is fair. However, I will concede there are issues with it, but those issues come from loopholes and relaxed laws written by you and your colleagues under the gold dome.  Take for instance a situation where Mr. Smith’s developer neighbor gets tax incentives to develop the properties through TAD funds raised from Mr. Smith’s taxes, and sitting on several under assessed lots while new home buyers pay full value. Or maybe Mr. Smith’s other neighbor with 10 acres valued at only $1 for several years slipping under the radar, while the GA Department of Revenue’s tax digest review guidelines consider it “acceptable.”  How about the relaxed guidelines that allow the government to reassess who they want when they want, with no requirements that come close to the documentation and justifications required of licensed independent appraisers.  County after county has performed massive county wide revaluations, only to reveal serious deficiencies. With no changes in the law, fairness in assessments, slips further into disarray, every time.

These property assessment caps are just a feel good political posturing aimed at appeasing the oblivious masses.  You have the opportunity to write more accountability into the law. A property should be taxed fairly what it is worth on the fair market. No more, no less.  Property assessment caps are already in place in the form of homestead, which was in danger of not being funded. Why did you not mention the quarter mill collected by the state? Why has the Governor not lowered the state’s millage rate as authorized every year to provide tax relief? More accountability is needed, but that accountability falls on the property owner to stand up for their own rights, for the property owner to participate in their local government. More accountability is needed on the process by which the government determines values. Even more accountability is needed of those that set the millage rates through the spending budgets driving the need to raise even more revenue.