My TRIM Notice indicates a 13% increase in tax (county, school, and water management) from last year. My assessed value increased by 1.9% from last year. My assessed value decreased the previous year by 0.6%. The county tax is about half of the total tax bill. The school taxes are basically the rest and they changed by a very small amount.
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Originally Posted by pauld315
I think I have read all the comments here and I didn't see this point being raised.
The only 2 columns worth looking at on the TRIM are 5 and 6 and 7 and 8. 5 and 6 show you what your tax rate and liability is IF the taxing authorities had decided to stay revenue neutral this year (collect the same amount of taxes as the previous year even with higher assessments) Columns 7 and 8 are the tax rates and your liability if they don't AND they implement the tax rates shown on the TRIM.
You should also look at your assessed value for this year versus last year. I have never figured out how or when Sumter County reassesses property values. Where I moved from, they did it once every 8 years. Here, they reassessed my property when I bought it and now they have reassessed it again the following tax year.
So, they are actually doing a double whammy on the taxpayers this year or at least on me. They raised my assessment by .8% this year (last year it was raised 13%) AND they are not staying revenue neutral.
Column 5 of my TRIM says that if they had stayed revenue neutral my county tax rate would have been 5.0342 with the new assessment. Instead. my county tax rate will be 6.70 since they are not staying revenue neutral.
How do they spin that as a 24 or 25% increase ? They did it by simply saying that if they kept the rate from last year the same (again, not revenue neutral) then we would only have a 25.5% increase in county taxes. However, oftentimes, a taxing authority will decrease their rate when they reassess to keep the revenue the same as the previous year and that is what they are showing in Column 5. This is not the case here.
Based on that, the actual tax increase is much more than 25.5% it is more like 33% when you taking into consideration the upward assessed value.
The simple math
(The new rate) 6.7 - (Revenue Neutral rate) 5.0342 = 1.6658. 1.6658/5.0342 = a 33.08 % increase in county tax from what it would have been if they stayed revenue neutral compared to what they have done by raising my assessment and the tax rate.
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