INC NEWS - FW: County Tax Flexibility

[pat carstensen]

Sorry -- it should say the sales tax would NOT be on food.  Regards, pat


>From: "pat carstensen" <pats1717 at hotmail.com>
>To: inc-list at durhaminc.org
>Subject: INC NEWS - County Tax Flexibility
>Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:37:33 -0400
>
>I attended the hearing last night on the possibility of increasing the 
>sales tax or the land transfer tax to relieve some need for property taxes. 
>  About 30 people spoke, some against the sales tax, some against the 
>transfer tax (tho it looks like the real estate folks will wait to get 
>people out in 2 weeks when the commissioners actually vote), some for the 
>transfer tax, some asking to just let the people vote (very eloquent from 
>Barry Ragin, for example), some asking for money for the arts (personally, 
>I think that a transfer tax should be seen as a down-payment on 
>infrastructure and appropriately limited), and a few "members of the 
>Leprechaun Cult" (those who believe there is a pot of gold somewhere and if 
>elected officials would just do their job, they would find that pot of gold 
>and we could all save on taxes (-:)
>
>Anyhow, a couple key pieces of info:
>* The sales tax would on be on food
>* The land transfer tax would be equivalent to 4.32 cents in property tax
>* The sales tax would be equivalent to 3.66 cents in property tax
>* A full presentation is on www.durhamcountync.gov (a pdf file, at top of 
>page, "Commissioners host Public Hearing on August 13th at 7pm to consider 
>whether to increase Sales Tax or Land Transfer Tax [PDF]"
>* Although it sounds like the Board of County Commissioners would like to 
>build in exceptions, the General Assembly doesn't allow it (basically, the 
>law says the only exceptions are transfers that aren't sales, like 
>bequests).  I suppose they could choose to make some rebates (for 
>renovating historical property or for the tax on the first $25K of the 
>value of the property)
>
>Personally, I think the way to handle the argument that senior citizens 
>have paid property tax for years and would end up "double paying" if they 
>sell their house now would be to phase in the land transfer tax so the 
>accumulated property tax savings more closely matches the transfer tax 
>paid.
>
>The commissioners are getting lots of calls and e-mails and were 
>appreciative of the high quality of the comments they are getting.  If you 
>want to add your voice:
>
>Ellen Reckhow      ereckhow at aol.com
>Becky Heron         beckymheron at nc.rr.com
>Phil Cousin           prcousin at earthlink.net
>Lewis Cheek         lcheek at durhamcouuntync.gov
>Michael Page        mpage at durhamcountync.gov
>
>
>Regards, pat
>
>_________________________________________________________________
>Find a local pizza place, movie theater, and more….then map the best route! 
>http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&ss=yp.bars~yp.pizza~yp.movie%20theater&cp=42.358996~-71.056691&style=r&lvl=13&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=950607&encType=1&FORM=MGAC01
>

_________________________________________________________________
Booking a flight? Know when to buy with airfare predictions on MSN Travel. 
http://travel.msn.com/Articles/aboutfarecast.aspx&ocid=T001MSN25A07001
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: text3.txt
Url: http://lists.deltaforce.net/mailman/private/inc-list/attachments/20070814/967aae46/attachment.txt