Friday, December 18, 2009

Not Pretty

BURRILLVILLE , CENTRAL FALLS, EAST PROVIDENCE, JAMESTOWN, JOHNSTON, LINCOLN, LITTLE COMPTON, NEW SHOREHAM, NORTH KINGSTOWN, NORTH SMITHFIELD, PROVIDENCE, SCITUATE, SMITHFIELD, SOUTH KINGSTOWN, WARREN, WARWICK, WEST WARWICK, WESTERLY

These are the Rhode Island towns that had revaluations in 2009 and will tax their property owners on their reassessments in 2010.

Since Governor Carcieri has announced major reductions in state aid this year in an attempt to balance the state budget, these unfortunate property owners will be facing a
double whammy; not only significant tax increases because of reduced state revenue but because revaluations produce their own dramatic shifts in tax burdens regardless of what happens to municipal budgets and tax levies.

In a typical revaluation year, from 1/2 to 2/3 of owners face tax increases far greater than necessary to fund the tax levy. It's an unjust and unfair system that lawmakers can fix if we and they are serious about being fair to Rhode Island property tax payers.

You can read more at the
RIGHTTAX website: http://righttax/org

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Makes religion look bad

I'm not a religious guy but for those who are, I'd suggest that if you accept as evidence of a supreme being a sort of weird cross on the shell of a chicken's egg or on a heifer's forehead your standards are pretty low. Do you think so little of G_d to believe he'd show his presence in such trivial ways? C'mon now.

But if you do need proof, the story Bob Kerr wrote about in the Providence Journal about someone giving his coat to a man wearing only a sweater pushing a shopping cart along the street on a cold winter day, or the story about the three men who pulled a fourth from icy water at Waterplace Park might provide far better evidence for you. I hope so.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Those Pesky Averages

Imagine you're asked to put one finger in each of two substances whose average temperature is 52°. No problem, right? But what if one glass contains boiling water at 212° and one contains dry ice at -109°? Would you accept this as a fair request?


Averages can be misleading.


Not much different with property taxes after revaluations. Data often deals with averages. The RI law called "S3050" sets the annual limit for local tax levy increases. When it drops to 4% (in 2013) it means that the when all the taxes of all the property owners are combined, the average increase will be 4%. Looks good - on paper.


The reality is that in town after town, despite the 4% limit, about a third of taxpayers get increases much above 4%, some as high as 100%, while others actually pay lower taxes. That's right, lower taxes, even as the tax levy just increased. In reality there are two kinds of taxpayers: those who pay too much and those who pay too little.


Until this unjust distribution of the local tax burden is acknowledged and fixed, all the posturing, the complaining about assessments, about the 'greedy' public employee unions, about graft and corruption, will produce little relief for those who have to pay the bills based on market values.


We must convince our legislators to discuss a new paradigm, where taxes for existing property owners are based on a system of "taxable" values producing tax bills directly related to budgets instead of the marketplace, where new owners will receive their first tax bill based on the market value of their purchase, instead of after a two year wait for revaluation, and where the limits on tax levy increases will apply to individual tax bills as well.


Please visit http://righttax.org for an in depth discussion on this most important issue. Please talk to your legislators and ask that they at least think about this proposal. If you do, they might listen and we can get fair and just property taxes, at last.