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New Information on School-Related Tax
Rate Increases in Pawling
Following a
heads-up from school board trustee-elect Richard Miskovitz,
Board of Education president Pauline Kaplan requested that assistant
superintendent of finance Margie Clarke go to each of the townships in our
school district to determine what impact a change in assessment values would have on the residents’ tax rates.
Here’s
what she learned: both Beekman and East Fishkill
have changed their assessment methods to “full value.” This means that the tax rate and therefore
the amount of money collected from each thousand dollars of property value is
reduced; this lowers a homeowner’s rate but not necessarily the amount of
taxes he pays. For example, let’s
assume that your home is worth $300,000, and your tax bill is $3,000. If you live in a town that taxes based on
50% of value, your tax rate is $3000 (taxes) divided by $150,000 (50% of your
home’s value); this is a tax rate of 2% or $20 per thousand. Now if that town changes its assessment
method to full value, your tax rate is now $3000 (taxes) divided by $300,000
(100% of your home’s value); this is a tax rate of 1% or $10 per thousand.
You still pay the same $3000 in taxes, but your rate of taxation has gone
down while the value of what you are taxed on goes up.
The
second thing Assistant Superintendent Clarke found was that the total
assessed value of homes in these towns, especially in Beekman,
has significantly increased. This does impact the amount of taxes you pay. For example, let’s assume that last year
your $300,000 home was located in a town whose homes were worth $30,000,000, and
the total taxes levied on your town was $300,000.This means your tax rate is:
300,000 (taxes) divided by $30,000,000 (total property
values), or $10 per thousand – so you paid $3000 in taxes on your
$300,000 home, $10 per thousand time 300 thousands. If this year some of your neighbors’ homes were
sold and reassessed so the total value of homes is now $45,000,0000, and the
taxes levied on your town remained $300,000, your town’s tax rate would now
be $300,000 (taxes) divided by $45,000,000 (total property
values), or 6.66% or $6.66 per
thousand. Since your house, which was
not reassessed, is still valued at $300,000, your taxes are now only $2,000! This is exactly the impact that Beekman’s and East Fishkill’s
rising property values have had on the taxes that Pawling residents will pay
this year. The estimated impact these factors have at this time is that your
tax rate will go up only 5.43% instead of the original 6.5%. This, however,
is NOT the big news! New
York State
has decided that this year, rather than delivering more state aid directly to
the districts to offset costs, it will instead give rebates through the STAR
program to offset tax increases.
The
impact this will have on your tax increase is based on your income and your
home’s actual value. A chart explaining the impact follows; but to give you a
very general idea of the impact, if your family income is below $120,000 and
your home has a tax-assessed value of below $178,000 (market value of
$490,000 in Pawling), you will end up paying less taxes this year than you
did last year because your rebate check from New York State will completely
offset your tax increase!
Chart
Below
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"If no one can help me take my foot from my mouth,
could they at least pass the ketchup?”
Tom Rose
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