Thank You Mr. Tax Man

9% ...14%... what does it matter?

Well, well, well, here we are again. I live in Robertson County. Earlier in the year, they reassessed my property. My property value increased by 70%. That really sounds exciting doesn’t it? It’s not. I had a brief moment of panic. The tax rate when my property was reassessed was $2.57 per $100. My rates were about to sky rocket. Then people much smarter than I am told me that the state requires the counties to keep the taxes “revenue neutral.” Ok, that sounds great, what does that mean? Well, it means that the state tells the county that they have to lower the tax rate so that your property taxes don’t triple or quadruple or whatever it is they do. So they dropped the rate to $1.64 or $1.67 per $100 so that our taxes stayed “revenue neutral.” They can raise your taxes, but not until they advertise it. So what did the commission do, they advertised it.

Robertson County announced that they were going to raise your taxes from $1.64 per $100 to $1.87 per $100 on the assessed value of your home. Not a big deal, only a 14% increase. WHAT????? Did anyone reading this get a 14% increase in their pay? I know we didn’t over here. I texted with my commissioner. She was NOT voting for the increase. My other commissioner was swayed by fear. If we don’t raise taxes, the fire and police and schools will lose money. WRONG!!!! Legally, the county commission cannot take money from the schools. If they add money to the schools’ budget, they can never take it away.

Let’s unpack all of this property tax nonsense. First, most of you have no idea what you pay in property taxes. Your mortgage, homeowners insurance, and property taxes are all rolled into your escrow account. You will get a notice in the mail stating that your escrow has gone up by $25 or $50 a month. It really won’t seem like a big deal. That’s after you get the notice telling you your homeowner’s insurance has gone up as well, and all of that was rolled into your escrow. $25-$50 a month is just not a big deal when you are paying your mortgage. We stopped using escrow when we moved three years ago. The bank could not figure out how to pay homeowner’s insurance in August and still have enough money for taxes in December. They would send us letters saying your escrow is short, we are going to charge you more per month in your mortgage payment. Then around April they would send us a check stating there is too much money in our escrow account. Rinse Repeat.(There is a law that won’t be them keep extra money in your escrow account) So, for many of us, the increase will show up in December and be 100’s of dollars. Oh, and when the county website doesn’t work and they don’t take your payment, they will charge you extra. Don’t ask me how I know.

Since the increase, I’ve spoken to a few county commissioners. None of them are super happy about having to increase taxes, but since it hasn’t been done in 8 years, and the unprecedented growth, they had to. Let me get this straight, the City of White House approved 1000’s of houses, and now the county has to raise taxes to pay for all of the things we need. Lennar, DR Horton, Ryan, Pulte, Drees, David Weekly, and LGI are all in White House. So here is the fee schedule for Robertson County.

At $.35 per square foot, it looks like they would have raised just shy of $1 million from The Parks and Legacy Farms. (based on 1000 2500sq ft homes) That seems like a lot, but when a new ambulance costs $300k, that’s nothing.

There are still 700 houses waiting to be built on Calista Road, why not adjust the fees? The city of White House increased impact fees, Robertson County could do the same. They wouldn’t even need to increase it on everyone, why not just increase the fees to the subdivisions? The country’s largest builders are here and want to build a house on every inch of land we have available, why not make them pay for the infrastructure we need? We are going to need a new fire house, more ambulances, a new school, and those of us who live here are going to pay for those things. Lennar and their friends will make money hand over fist and walk away like the cool guys that don’t look at explosions.

At the end of the day, property taxes are theft. We will never own our own home. We have to apply to the government to freeze the taxes after we own our home. That freeze is only for the homeowners that the govt deems low enough income to qualify. Again, you will never own your own home, you will forever be renting it from the govt. But the moment you tell them you don’t want to pay, they will scare you with taking away schools, and police and fire. I don’t have the answers, I just have the complaints. We have to figure out a way for our government to spend less money and get it from somewhere other than our property. A good start would be from these large builders. But then again, what do I know, I’m just a peasant who pays taxes.

(also, the way they figure the taxes is at 25% of the assessed value. So $1.64/$100 at 25% of the assessed value. I think. It’s so complicated)

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