PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

I thought I would start this newsletter by referring to an interesting article on the “Governing” website titled “Some Sensible Approaches to Property Tax Reform”. This is a topical issue around the world, but particularly in the USA which is what the article focuses on. Here are some selected extracts from the article.

The author states: “Cutting this unloved levy has again become a flashpoint in some states, once more raising difficult issues of fairness. Here’s what we can learn from decades of tax-limitation laws. It’s like clockwork: After a few years of rapid increases in home values that make owners feel richer, they face higher local property tax bills that cannot be paid from their paper profits. Municipalities and school districts turn to the higher property assessments to reap new revenues to pay for inflated costs, higher employee salaries and new expenditures that they otherwise couldn’t afford. Then state politicians and tax-revolt associations jump into the act. Their usual political impulse is to strip away those “windfall” revenue increases by dialing back the local taxes and erecting new voting requirements for future increases, with or without compensating state aid to the affected localities.

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