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FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION |
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State
Rep. Jesse White
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Now is not the time for reassessment
If the number of phone calls I typically receive are any indication, the people of Washington County are unhappy with the property taxes they must pay to fund education, and they want solutions.
An opportunity arose last session for the General Assembly to provide one such solution, which would have changed the Pennsylvania Constitution to eliminate all real property taxes. While I voted for this legislation and it passed the House, the Senate failed to take action on it, missing an opportunity to work together to evaluate the system and propose legislation to modify the property tax formula. In my opinion, the General Assembly still has work to do on this issue.
Locally, two school districts have proposed a forced countywide reassessment of property taxes in Washington County that would take us in the opposite direction by potentially increasing taxes. People do not understand how a reassessment would affect them directly and the subject can get very confusing very quickly. I would like the opportunity to explain the process.
When a county reassesses its property, it is determining the value of all of its homes for tax purposes. Conventional wisdom is that one-third of properties will pay more in taxes, one-third, less, and the remainder will stay at the same rate. But what reassessment proponents often fail to disclose, is that the process can also be used for a backdoor tax increase.
Here’s how: When all of the homes in the county are reassessed, the value of a mill, or the percentage of the assessed value people pay in taxes, changes. Virtually all homes have increased in value since the last reassessment in 1979, the last time a reassessment was done, so it should take far fewer mills to generate the same amount of tax dollars. As a result, local governments and school boards could keep their tax rates at the same number of mills, but take much more of our money and still stay under any millage cap.
Of course, a reassessment will have to be conducted eventually, but I strongly believe legislation is needed to address disparities before a reassessment is done in Washington County. It is also estimated that a reassessment will cost the county a staggering $8 million.
The county cannot afford to foot that bill, which is why it should wait until the legislature has had the opportunity to analyze the state's property tax reassessment system and address current problems through the enactment of legislation. That opportunity would arise once the Senate passes a bill (H.B. 1661) we sent it last June to impose a temporary moratorium on any court-ordered countywide property tax assessments. The bill is a companion to a resolution adopted in June, which directs the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee to study Pennsylvania's current property tax assessment system.
The moratorium, in conjunction with the study, would give the General Assembly suitable time to enact legislation to fix any deficiencies and avoid dramatic property tax increases.
All Pennsylvania homeowners including those in Washington County stand to benefit from bringing uniformity, fairness and protections to the state's reassessment system. While legalized gaming has provided some tax relief, and some of the state's seniors have had school taxes eliminated completely through the successful Property Tax/Rent Rebate Program, more needs to be done to lower property taxes. I believe addressing the reassessment system is a good start.