Property taxes rise, SUV values decline
, Richmond News Staff
11-24-2009
It’s a good-news, bad-news situation for real estate and personal property tax values in Ray County right now.
The bad news: Personal property tax revenue slipped in 2009 from $3.755 million to $3.3 million.
The good news is, those slipping valued are offset somewhat by real estate property tax revenue rising from $11.463 million in 2008 to $11.596 million for 2009. Business owners felt the pinch of increased taxes on commercials buildings as well.
It’s a problem Ray County Assessor Kent Wollard blames in part on declining SUV values during the slumping economy’s gas crunch. It might not hit taxing entities who compensated accordingly hard, and it should mainly impact that county’s road and bridge funds.
“What happened, is when the valuations went down every (tax entity) could, according to law, raise their rates up a little bit,” County Collector Margie Bowman said.
Wollard explained valuations are based on NADA values to re-evaluate automobiles annually. In Ray County, he said despite pick-ups and SUVs being prevalent in rural areas like Ray County, values are down nationally as people favor more gas-efficient vehicles.
“If people are concerned about their job, they’re not going to buy a Cadillac Escalade are they?” Wollard said.
Cars almost always depreciate, Wollard said. But this year, there’s the added problem that people are phasing out SUVs and not “replenishing” their population on the roads. People are driving their old cars longer, and some are passing on replacing with the same vehicles.
“Not only was the older stuff getting older, you didn’t have the replenishment,” Wollard said. “Before, maybe those same trucks were still coming down a little bit every year, but you still had replenishment.”
Even the higher real estate tax revenue create confusion in some taxpayers eyes. Wollard explained homes’ market values might’ve fallen a little bit, but they didn’t fall below a line where Wollard would feel obligated to lower valuations.
“All of a sudden, everything got sour and the world went south,” Wollard said. “But so far, it hasn’t passed my numbers up. When that happens, then I crunch my statistics and say, ‘Do they need to be adjusted?’”
The impact of appraisals trickles down. Special districts, in turn, base their levies on Wollard’s data. Those taxes are out of his hands.
“When I do my assessing, I say the value of the districts, whether it’s Ray County or a whole or Hardin Fire or whatever,” Wollard said. “I tell them what the value is for their district for their appraisals. They’re the ones who set their tax levies.”
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