Nothing gets a voter’s attention quite like opening a letter from the local county government tax assessment office to see they think your home property has escalated 40% in value for their tax purposes.
In Wake County last week, a person could almost hear the collective thuds as neighbors passed out in their living rooms as they opened their mail.
The highest revaluations were up 50%. The lowest was 20%. All around Wake County, property revaluations were up an average of 40%.
Several people contacted me right away to ask what they could do about the revaluation since they know it means their property tax will go up. My judicious diplomatic answer was: “We get what we vote for” and I just left it at that.
The more truthful answer would have been: “What did you expect was going to happen when you voted to elect very liberal people to hold every elected seat on our county commissions and city councils?”
It is not like progressive liberals are shy about stating what they want to do with your money when they get elected ― they are very honest about wanting to spend it on more and expanded government programs.
They never talk about cutting spending anywhere ― except in the police force which every sane person can now agree is utterly insane.
As long as voters can be deceived into believing “someone else” is going to be taxed to pay for liberal progressive programs, that is Ok. But when a voter has to pay for these programs themselves through higher taxes, serious consternation sets in about who to vote for and why in the future.
Here’s what is going on when local government raises property valuations. Local officials are raising valuations to give them room to raise more taxes in the future. They won’t raise taxes by 40% overnight to be paid in full the next year. If they did, there would be a tax revolt in every large municipality in North Carolina which would rival the Whiskey Rebellion of 1792.
However, over the next four years, you can rest assured that your property taxes will go up probably 6-8% per year. By the end of the next four-year period, your personal property tax payments will come darn close to being 40% higher than they were in 2023 ― so start getting ready for it.
“State law requires local government officials to publish a revenue-neutral tax rate as part of the budget process.” That somewhat innocuous sentence is in the explanatory pamphlet which accompanied every tax assessment statement. What it means in plain English is that a local government is required to lower the tax rate so that the higher property tax valuations across the entire county will yield roughly the same amount of tax revenue next year as in the previous one.
So, like the last assessment in 2020, property owners will see a dramatic drop in the tax rate for 2024 which may even lead to a property tax cut of some small degree for people whose property appreciated less than 40%.
The county tax rate per $100 of valuation was cut from .7207 in 2019 to .6000 in 2020. It was raised to .6195 in 2022 and then to .6590 in 2023. Clearly, the intention was to raise more revenue from the higher property assessments but just do it slowly over several years.
The Raleigh city tax rate was raised last year to 43.3 per $100 of valuation. You can expect that rate to go up 6-8% annually as well.
Putting a frog in a pot of water and then slowly turning up the heat degree-by-degree until it is cooked might be a helpful metaphor to use ― except it is not true. Unless there is absolutely no way to escape, no frog is dumb enough to just sit there and let itself be cooked to death.
Given the exorbitant inflation rates we have seen since 2021, local officials will try to justify higher property taxes to pay for higher costs for administering local services. However, everything costs a lot more because of rampant inflation caused by the economic policies of another progressive Democrat liberals voted into office, President Joe Biden.
The only way to limit the amount of tax you have to pay is to change your voting habits. If you place a higher degree of importance on social issues than you do on paying much higher property taxes, by all means keep voting for progressive leftist Democrats.
Otherwise, vote for Republicans. There is no other choice.
