The Senate has voted to reinstate the one percent property tax limit adopted when voters passed I-747.
The measure was approved 39 - 9.
Earlier today the House approved a similar bill overwhelmingly.
The legislation is free of amendments and does not address the issue of banked capacity. It is also lacking any sunset provision.
Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-36th) was the first to stand against the bill on the floor saying that the legislation was flawed to begin with. Her vote of concious will no doubt play well to her Seattle district.
Sen. Mike Carrell (R-28th) and Don Benton (R-17th) strongly advocated the bill's passage.
Sen. Derek Kilmer (D-26th) advocated for the bill's passage saying it was restoring the will of the people. Kilmer represents a suburban district in Gig Harbor.
All day Sen. Margarita Prentice (D-11th) seemed put off that she had to get her hands dirty peddling an Eyman initiative. The Renton senator filibustered for about three minutes trying to explain away why she was voting for the legislation while basically settling on her belief that I-747 was poorly crafted.
The Gov. Gregoire is set to sign the legislation in a half-hour.
Posted by DonWard at November 29, 2007 05:31 PM | Email ThisThank god for Tim Eyman, EFF, and WPC working to protect the taxpayers from the Christine and the State employees Union
Hey Hey
Ho Ho
Tax and Spend have got to go
We will need to go after them again and again.
Posted by: GS on November 29, 2007 07:42 PMMike is DA MAN, and I wish I lived back in the 28th, instead of the 44th. Well, not really, but U.P. was a nice community, at one time.
Posted by: The Geezer on November 29, 2007 08:19 PMWhere is Rossi on this issue? He needs to stomp on this in the name of every damn citizen that works hard for a living and not to defer paying taxes to teachers or people who CHOOSE not to pay. The state should not be in the business of managing fricken liens on homes and escrow matters. Where is common sense?
My parents who lived through the depression are outraged. Try working and saving your money first, before you ask others to pay for your taxes!!!!!
Posted by: metro on November 29, 2007 08:22 PMWhere is Rossi on this issue? He needs to stomp on this in the name of every damn citizen that works hard for a living and not to defer paying taxes to teachers or people who CHOOSE not to pay. The state should not be in the business of managing fricken liens on homes and escrow matters. Where is common sense?
My parents who lived through the depression are outraged. Try working and saving your money first, before you ask others to pay for your taxes!!!!!
Posted by: Metro on November 29, 2007 08:23 PMThat "issue of banked capacity" was indeed addressed -- and resolved. HB 2416 specifically applies retroactively to taxes levied for collection in 2002 and thereafter. That wipes out the "banked capacity" that the supreme court's ruling created.
No other "issue of banked capacity" is involved at all.
If you want to eliminate the ability to "bank" levy capacity, please say why. This ability was put into law years ago to end the "use it or lose it" aspect of levy authority. Before it was possible to "bank" levy capacity, a taxing district had to either raise taxes to the maximum or lose that levy capacity.
"Banked" levy authority is created by taxing districts which do NOT raise taxes to the maximum.
Why do you want to punish taxing districts which do NOT raise taxes to the maximum?
Have any of you thought it through at all?
If so, please explain your apparently idiotic desire to eliminate "banked levy capacity."
Posted by: Micajah on November 29, 2007 08:34 PMTim got the ball rolling, but hundreds of thousands of us signed the initiative petition and close to 60% of the voters approved I-747.
The Dems love to try to make it a personality clash, but if the ideas lacked support from the public, they either wouldn't make the ballot, or they would be voted down.
Just because the SC keeps overturning on technicalities doesn't mean that We The People didn't want laws of that type. We went the initiative route because our elected representatives were not listening to us and passing the laws we were requesting.
Posted by: SouthernRoots on November 29, 2007 09:34 PMAs one who saw my property taxes increase last year alone by 13% in just one year by Island County, I can tell you that I am really getting P'd off at these people.
I vote for 1% because I want 1% not 13%!
Posted by: GS on November 29, 2007 09:45 PMI will bet it was not "banked levy capacity."
According to the minutes of their meeting last December, the Island County commissioners didn't even increase the county's "current expense" levy by the 1 percent "limit factor" allowed by I-747. They increased it only by the amounts generated by "new construction." That wouldn't have caused your taxes to rise so much.
So, what did it? Did your assessed value rise much more than the average? If so, some of the tax burden shifted to you from someone whose property value rose by less than the average.
Unless you figure out what caused it to go up, you have no rational basis for advocating one change or another to our tax system.
It is idiotic -- and I use that word after careful thought about its insulting nature -- to advocate the elimination of the ability to "bank" levy authority by choosing NOT to raise property taxes to the maximum.
No one seems willing to step up and explain why such an idiotic thing is being advocated by the R's.
Posted by: Micajah on November 29, 2007 10:24 PMAny 13% increase in property tax should not be allowed! Anywhere, Anytime. Pure BS
These massive property taxes are driving people out of their homes!
All of Island County are bitching about them except for the politicians.
They took in 10 Million more last year alone just in property taxes.
It is insane!
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/341517_special29.html
From the Seattle PI article, from the King County Assessor:
"Dollars that local taxing districts could raise in addition to the 1 percent increase allowed under the proposed legislation:
City of Seattle $18.3 million
Percentage increase: 7%
City of Bellevue:
$8.9 million
Percentage increase: 33%
Port of Seattle: $11.6 million
Percentage increase: 18%
(Assumes a levy of all previous banked capacity plus 1 percent)
Source: King County assessor
Posted by: GS on November 29, 2007 11:26 PMI see both sides of the banked capacity issue. I do think there is a danger, without banked capacity, of cities just taxing to the max every year, to avoid losing that potential income.
And even if the city of Bellevue has 33% banked capacity. 1) If they raised taxes that much in one year they would have a revolt on their hands and 2) because they did not use all of their potential in the past, property owners have NOT been paying it all this time. If it was cut off and they decided instead to raise the taxes the entire 1% every year, then property tax owners would already be paying the higher rate. And you know that once government has money, they seem to be able to find more things to spend it on!
Posted by: My Boaz's Ruth on November 30, 2007 08:37 AMIn 27 years of home "ownership", government has increased my property taxes roughly 500%. The result is that, nearing retirement, I have been forced to take on large additional debt to take care of needed upgrades and repairs. A large part of this expense involved keeping the heat in and the rain out. The government, through the taking of my hard-earned dollars, is directly responsible for a large part of this added debt. There is something wrong when your monthly property tax bill begins to exceed your monthly mortgage payment. The whole idea of home ownership is a joke. Try not paying your property taxes for five years and see what happens. People with guns will come and take your home by force. Now, these losers want to do me a favor, after jacking up my property taxes 20 - 30%, by "allowing" me to defer my property tax payment until the sale of my home. How kind of them to stick their hand out and grab whatever might be left when I pass. If past experience is any indicator, if I were to live another 25 years, my property taxes will be in excess of $22,500 per year. Fifty percent of that is more than double what I currently pay. Does this sound to you that there is a strong likelihood that I will be taxed out of my home? So much for that great sense of compassion Democrat phonies keep trying to peddle. I guess I don't need to tell you what these leaches can do with their "banked capacity".
Limiting banked-capacity has nothing to do with property value changes. If you want to limit property value changes, then you need to address this instead of addressing the rate increase. There was nothing in Tim Eyman's initiative, nor in the bill passed that address property reevaluation. My guess, if Tim Enyman was smart, he would start to focus his efforts here, since this is where the largest tax increases have been coming.
Posted by: tc on November 30, 2007 09:52 AMThis shift in the tax burden among individuals cannot be avoided, unless we want to change the system and make those whose property values do not rise pay more than they otherwise would.
"Banked levy capacity" has nothing to do with this shift in the tax burden from one individual to another. And, although GS doesn't care whether his property value went up, it is a fact that property taxes are based on "wealth" which is reflected in the value of one's property. Over the long term, that wealth parallels the level of one's income -- but in the short run, big jumps in market value obviously cause problems by raising one's tax burden more than one's income has gone up.
My point about the "banked levy capacity" is that it has nothing to do with the complaints about the shift in tax burden among individuals. In fact, "banked levy capacity" tends to reduce the increases in taxes on the group, thereby reducing the amount that can shift from one to another person.
People like GS need to sit down and figure out what caused the increase they don't like, and then figure out what might prevent it -- rather than simplistically hollering about wanting no more than a 1 percent increase in his tax bill each year. So far as I know, he simply cannot have his 1 percent increase without forcing someone else whose property value (wealth) increased by less than his to pay more in taxes.
Posted by: Micajah on November 30, 2007 11:40 AMInflation all by itself since 1980 would have required the number of dollars you pay in property taxes to be two and a half times as much as you paid 27 years ago.
So, if your figures are correct, then the number of dollars you pay now amounts to almost double the worth of the dollars you paid in 1980.
What caused the increase? It certainly wasn't "banked levy capacity."
Probably, the doubling was caused by two things. First, local excess levies for school operations and construction have gone up substantially since 1980. Second, in the pre-I-747 days, taxing districts could increase regular levies by 6 percent and more each year.
From 1980 to the mid-1990s, the total property tax collected in Washington by all taxing districts and the state tripled, while the total personal income of all tax payers only doubled.
Since the adoption of I-747, the annual increases in regular levies have been reined in. And, since most school districts have reached their higher levy lids, their excess levies don't tend to rise as fast as before.
The two decades from 1980 to 2000 were in fact miserable times for tax payers, and it will take a long while to come down from the heights of property taxes.
With a 1 percent limit factor, regular levies will cause annual increases on the group of tax payers in each taxing district that are less than inflation -- typically about 1.5 percent a year. If "lid lifts" aren't approved willy-nilly by tax payers, then we will eventually feel less pain from the total tax bill.
In the meantime, I would hope that people would figure out what causes the increases they don't like, then figure out what might work to prevent them.
It's too bad the R's don't seem to have the cognitive ability to take the lead on this.
Posted by: Micajah on November 30, 2007 11:58 AMIf I own stock in a company and the price of that stock increases, I don't pay taxes on it until I sell the stock and actually realize a profit. Why isn't it the same with my home?
The home doesn't have any more value to me from one year to the next. It's not like I'm getting 10% more value from my home over last year, but according to the tax man, I must be because I'm asked to pay more taxes as the perceived selling price goes up.
Worse, what happens if the market goes up (I pay more taxes due to yearly assessment), then the value decreases when I sell it? I've paid taxes over the years on a profit that I never realized. That just stinks.
Posted by: Smoley on November 30, 2007 12:23 PMIn fact property value increase, will often decrease the overall tax rate. For example, for the last school levy for Peninsula school district, it was a renewal of an existing levy, but the rate decreased due to the overall increased property values for the school district.
I would contend that if you looked at the historic rates, the majority of the increase in peoples taxes has been due to increased property values, not rates. What really needs to be done is a cap on property re-evaluations, which I believe California has also implemented because they were in the same boat. Property value increases should only be tied to inflation, but can be readjusted at time of sale (or possibly also refinancing). Loans and finances, also should be tied to existing county property value rate, not some abritrary market number. If people want the profit out of their home, then their property taxes should reflect the new value of their home.
Posted by: tc on November 30, 2007 12:27 PMI didn't say anything about "tax rates," so, if you read "tax rates" into what I wrote, that might explain why it made no sense to you.
The entire group of people who own property within the boundaries of a taxing district pay the same "tax rate" to the taxing district (assuming they aren't exempt in some way).
When I talk about different tax burdens for individuals in the group, I speak of the dollars they each pay and that the group pays. No one can spend a "tax rate," so it makes no sense at all to talk about the "tax rate" when you want to discuss the tax bill. The dollars are what we use to pay the bill, and the dollars are what the taxing district spends.
When assessed values of taxable property rise each year, some property values go up more than others. A tax payer whose property rises at the average rate in the group will see an increase in this tax of about 1.5 percent. A tax payer whose value went up by far more than the average will see a much bigger increase in his tax bill. A tax payer whose value went up by far less than the average will see a reduction in his tax bill. The tax burden shifts from the fellow whose property went up by less. It shifts to the fellow whose value went up by more than the average.
I've seen it happen with my own tax bill over the years. One year, I would have a small decrease, followed the next year by a modest increase, then a big increase, then a small increase, etc. -- as the burden shifted back and forth in relation to the rise in property values for each individual owner in this area.
This year, it went up by a little more than 11 percent -- and that was the average in my area. There was no "shift" except in the "state school tax" -- we pay almost 10 percent more this year, because Kitsap County's values rose by more than the statewide average. And, there was a voter-approved "lid lift" for the fire district; and the port district sneaked a big increase past our ability to put it on the ballot. Some people saw much bigger increases than I, if their assessed values went up by more than the average. And, some people saw increases that were less than mine. I doubt anyone saw a decrease this year because of the larger levy amounts collected by the port district, state school tax, and fire district.
When you say that rising property values cause taxes to go up, you are missing part of the way the system works. Rising property valuations (except for state-assessed utility property and locally-assessed value increases caused by "new construction") do not increase the total amount collected by the taxing district.
Here is how this state's property tax system works regarding annual increases:
First, the taxing district's elected officials set the dollar amount of the levy to be imposed on the group of owners in the district.
Second, the assessor receives the certified levy amount from the taxing district via the county commissioners.
Third, the assessor divides the dollar amount of the levy by the total property valuation in the taxing district to calculate the tax rate.
Fourth, the treasurer sends each individual a bill based on the individual property values and applicable tax rates provided to the treasurer by the assessor.
Notice that the dollar amount to be collected is set before the tax rate is calculated.
Now, the annual increases that are allowed are figured this way:
Multiply this year's allowable levy amount by 101 percent.
Multiply the value of "new construction" by this year's tax rate.
Multiply any increase in value of state-assessed property by this year's tax rate.
Add those three figures together, and that's the maximum dollar amount that can be levied in the coming year.
Notice that the increase in market value of property which has not been improved through "new construction" is nowhere in that calculation of the allowable maximum levy. It has no effect -- none, zero, nada, zilch. Anyone who believes that the total dollar amount collected by the taxing district goes up along with rising market values of property which is not improved via new construction simply doesn't know how the system works.
Posted by: Micajah on November 30, 2007 12:58 PMIt seems to me that this number is based on the assessed value of the property within the taxing district. Therefore, if the overall assessed value goes up (like it has been in Pierce County), then the taxing district gets this increase in their calculation, which you provided. When I look at the assessed value number at the county's web site, they have a value for the individual property and one for the taxing district as a whole (be it city, county, park distrit, etc.). I guess I assumed that this was the total of the individual properties. If is not, then how can the total of the properties exceed the overall assessed value, which would be the case given your scenario?
Posted by: tc on November 30, 2007 01:07 PMHere in Kitsap County, the assessor publishes an "assessment book" each year which shows the state-assessed property valuation for the entire county. But, there isn't anything that I've seen to show how it is divided up among the taxing districts.
The amount that is added to the "levy lid" (the maximum allowable levy dollar amount) each year is increased by state-assessed property values, if there is an increase in those values. It's only the increase in state-assessed property value that is multiplied by this year's tax rate to determine the dollar amount added to the levy lid.
The dollar amount that "new construction" adds to the levy lid is determined by multiplying the valuation of new construction by this year's tax rate.
Both those amounts -- state-assessed property value increases and new construction value increases -- show up in the total property valuation for the county.
What many people call "existing property" is the other property (like homes) which does not rise in value because of new construction. (New construction includes remodeling, renovation, etc., not just building an entirely new structure on previously bare ground.)
Existing property is assessed at its market value, which can rise each year. And, that rise shows up in the county's total property valuation.
So, I don't see how you're figuring that somehow the total property valuation in the county isn't the same as the previous year's total valuation plus the value of new construction, increases in state-assessed property values, and market-driven increases in the values of existing property.
The point I was trying to make in showing how the allowable levy increase is figured is that the market-driven increases in the values of existing property add nothing at all to the allowable levy amount.
The fact that increases in values of existing property don't add to the total levy imposed on the group of property owners within the taxing district is the reason tax rates have been dropping in the last few years. With a "limit factor" of 1 percent, while the values of existing property are rising by more than 1 percent a year, it takes a lower tax rate to collect the levy.
The taxing districts have still been collecting greater levy amounts from the group -- typically between 3 and 5 percent annual increases in the total levy amount -- even though the tax rates are dropping.
Which reminds me, "GS" said he is in Island County. Here is my nomination for the most fraudulent county assessor's web page in the state. Notice how the tax rates are stated along with the percentage decline in the tax rates, but nowhere does the assessor show the increases in the dollar amounts collected by those tax rates.
GS needs to have a talk with his county assessor. There is no excuse for an assessor to present such misleading garbage. The dollar amounts collected are the dollars paid by tax payers and spent by taxing districts. No one can spend a tax rate.
I am about to sell my Island county home, because people like Micajah want to tax me out of it.
Gregoire and her gang did Zero yesterday, because their phony 1% scenerio did nothing to stop these idiots from raising your taxes 10% to 30 % this year alone.
Micajah, My taxes went up 13% in one year, and I am still really really pissed about it.
This year I expect the same BS from your gang
Posted by: gs on November 30, 2007 10:44 PMYou really need to take a deep breath and control your emotions. Maybe then your reason can take the lead.
Posted by: Micajah on December 1, 2007 10:31 AM