I and many others just got our 2021 property tax bills. The overall tax rate did go down some, but due to my taxable value going up — my total taxes are up 13.76%, and I’m sure theirs also significantly went up.
I think many people like me would like to see a comparison of this year’s budget with last year’s and what are the key items that resulted in such a large increase. Probably worthwhile to do the same for Asheville city also.
It would be nice to be able to bring such an article into the next county meeting.
Thanks for the previous articles.
— Gerard Worster
Asheville
Editor’s note: We appreciate the feedback. Although we don’t plan to revisit the city or county budget processes, the following two Xpress articles may shed light on the tax situation: “Tax and Spend: Buncombe Floats Higher Property Bills for 2021-22,” published May 5, and “Asheville Projects Higher Taxes for Budget Priorities,” May 19.
Will Asheville/Buncombe citizens ever get as exercised about the burden of ever-spiraling property taxes as they do about hotels , the TDA, and tourists?
There is a solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
“Tell me you know nothing about the California housing market without telling me you know nothing about the California housing market.”
Prop 13 rewards existing homeowners in the wealthiest communities and robs future generations. It penalizes homeowners at the lower end of the market. It encourages creative estate planning to prevent reassessment during property transfers. It encourages retrenchment — the longer you live in a home, the greater the disparity between its market value and your property tax bill. It discourages relocation into and across the state and encourages relocation out of the state.
Those Californians selling up their 900 sq ft homes and buying big ones in the Asheville area for a million dollars? They were probably paying less in property taxes there than they will here. But if you want to reward the residents of Biltmore Forest and Beaver Lake and you want more Californians in town, please keep advocating for this.
https://www.trulia.com/research/prop-13/
All that said: the county and city got greedy when they saw the numbers from the reassessment, and they know it. That’s why they came up with the stupid grant program to paper over the cracks.
Taxes went up because D elected officials like to spend other people’s money.
The gang of assessors are a pencil-whipping nest of corrupt D-party bureaucrats. I say that from doing research in the Buncombe County tax lookup database. You should go there too if you’d like to exercise the anger secretion cells of your adrenal glands. I found property after property that was grossly undervalued because of — you got it! — corrupt Democrat politics. For example I found a home in Beaver Lake that had been grossly undervalued since it was purchased — from me — almost 40 years ago. Each of the owners is as much a felon as a perjurer. And so is the crooked assessor. The home is a spacious two-story with full baths on each story and a full daylight basement. And a garage! On paper the owners have turned it into a humble little bungalow with 1 full bath and just over 1,000 sq. ft. And no garage. Liars!
I found a humble little home in S. Asheville which is assessed by another crook so high that its taxes are over $3,000 a year. And the register Republican owner who suddenly died in June got screwed out of his old-age exemption so that now his daughter has to pay this over-burdensome levy. Remember this: the power to tax is the power to destroy!
A home near Weaverville is ravaged by weather, time, black mold, vandals, insects, and thieves. The copper plumbing has been stolen, the windows shattered, the joists and framing eaten by termites. Despite this, the utterly scurrilous assessor, a scoundrel of the lowest kind, has recently almost doubled the value of this ruined home in order to overwhelm the elderly owner with taxes.
If you really want to know just how crooked your tax department is, go do some research in the tax lookup database.
I have been a financial advisor to various NYS municipalities for many years, and in that role have been preparing municipal budgets for many years. Several years ago the State instituted a Tax Cap rule where annual tax increases were limited to the LOWER of the local inflation rate up to a maximum of 2%. Yes the municipality can override the tax cap at a public hearing but must have a super majority vote approval.
A very important point here is that the tax cap is based upon TOTAL TAX COLLECTIONS IN THE BUDGET, AND NOT, NOT, NOT THE TAX RATE. Therefore in a timeframe like we now have throughout Buncombe County where we have monumental increases in property values along with huge growth in commercial and residential development which all lead to increasing the taxable assessed value to be taxed, if the aforementioned model was utilized to measure an individual property’s taxes, IT IS LIKELY THE TOTAL INDIVIDUAL PROPERTY TAXES SHOULD BE DECREASING AND FOR SURE NOT INCREASING AT THEIR CURRENT RATE.