ease some of their alcohol-related law enforcement costs.
But if he can doctor up a new tax and make it sound like he's just recovering money the state deserves anyway, then he's all for it. He tells us to buy more stuff so the state can collect more sales tax. He keeps dreaming of the fabled Internet sales tax to collect money he thinks the state is being cheated out of.
And now he says that HB 1005, Rep. Rhoden's quasi-income tax for farmers, isn't a new tax at all: it's just a way to collect the taxes the state deserves. Says Governor Rounds:
We think there's got to be a better way than the current flawed system. There's 14 billion dollars of ag land which is improperly assessed [Ben Dunsmoor, "$14 Billion in Farmland Not Assessed Properly," KELOLand.com, 2008.01.31].
So Governor Rounds wants farmers to pay taxes on an additional $14 billion dollars dreamed up by a new formula. He supports taxing ag land on an entirely different basis, productive value instead of sale value. But he won't admit that it's a new tax that contradicts the demands he places on legislators that they not create new taxes.
Don't get me wrong: I think Rhoden's income tax for farmers is a step in the right direction. (On the other hand, repealing the 150% rule is a step off a cliff that should be amended right out of HB 1005.) If Governor Rounds supports it, great. It's just a shame the Governor can't msuter the courage to call a spade a spade and say, "I want new taxes."
Simply removing the 150% limit will stimulate South Dakota's economy.
ReplyDeleteAllowing adjoining land-owners to maintain artificially reduced taxable values when producing farm land all around them is escallating in value and selling for four times what assessed value is, is unfairly spreading the burden of taxation to homeowners and business owners who's taxable rates are much higher than ag land.
Bumping ag land values to 90% of full and true value will not necessarily increase taxes since valuation would also jump dramatically, but it would give us a realistic taxable value.
It would promote the sale of properties standing in the way of economic development. Those commercial properties that are artificially taxed lower than the recently-sold property next to them, allowing the owner to sit on the property while values jump, yet they pay taxes at an unrealistically low value.
It is not fair for someone with ag land near Sioux Falls to pay taxes on taxable value at $900 an acre when the farm across the road from them just sold for $56,000 an acre.
If taxable values are increased to 90% of full and true, most farmers will not see an increase in taxes because it involves across the board valuation increase which keeps the numbers relative.
"It would promote the sale of properties standing in the way of economic development."
ReplyDeleteThat's all good and fine if you view land strictly as an asset to be bought and sold. But that thinking doesn't help folks who look at their land not as a line on a ledger, but as a home, a tradition, something that has been in their family for generations and will be theirs to care for for generations to come. The fact that a developer wants to pay top dollar to turn a plot of land with a small house and a lot of trees into a ten-house subdivision doesn't mean we should do that. That's what the uproar in response to the 2005 Kelo v. New London decision was all about: Contrary to the Supreme Court's ruling, some things are more important than economic development.