No deal on budget

Help Hold the Line on Home Taxes

Currently, state lawmakers are busy developing a state budget. One proposal being discussed is increasing the taxes that property owners pay when they sell their own property.

Some lawmakers want the budget to include an increase in the existing statewide transfer tax and/or permission for local governments to adopt local transfer taxes.
This ploy – to hide this unfair home tax among the complex and lengthy language of the state budget – is not right.

The home transfer tax singles out one group of people to pay for infrastructure and services that benefit everyone. Why should property sellers pay more for the services and infrastructure that the entire community enjoys? This is not a tax on growth and newcomers.
It’s a tax on current residents who already pay property and sales taxes in their communities. This tax increase will not lower local property or sales taxes, it will just increase government spending.

Follow the link to contact your lawmakers

Sincerely,

Francis X. De Luca

State Director

http://capwiz.com/americansforprosperity/issues/alert/?alertid=9967676&type=ST&show_alert=1

It would appear our so-called elected representatives in Raleigh have sold out to special interests (Realtors) and self-interest (big donors) and thrown We the People and our unimportant needs under the bus.

The Senate is an embarrassment, but the House isn't all that much better. Their reported current position on the sales tax and upper-crust income tax are an abrogation of trust, in my opinion.

Minnie,

It is outrageous that a state running a $1.5 billion surplus is trying to find more ways to tax it's citizens. We are due some tax relief.

A transfer tax is particularly unfair, it is paid by every working and middle class family when we sell our biggest asset, our home. It will hit young folks trying to achieve the American Dream and the elderly on fixed incomes the hardest.

I'm not in the least bit inclined to have to write Wake County a check for $1,000 dollars when I sell my house. Every property owner in North Carolina already pays an equivalent to a transfer tax in the form of a deeds stamp tax of .2% that is more than enough.

That might not be real money to you but it is enough to make a difference in my family's life.

And your argument about not moving is ridiculous. As people get older and the number of people living in home goes up and then down, they move. In fact according to the study below the average person, as you point out, moves 7 times in their life and and about 1 in 5 americans move each year.

So that is a lot of folks that will get hit with a huge new tax for the "value" that local governments contribute to their homes. And home prices won't appreciate forever. This tax could mean you lose money on your home. It really is a monumentally bad idea.

http://ecp3113-01.fa01.fsu.edu/lively_introduction/Migration.htm#box3

The post has been corrected. My apologies. The correct version ran in the print edition, but I mistakenly left an earlier draft on here.

— RTB 

Who's the source of the information about the House compromise on taxes? My representative just wrote this back to me:

The House position is to keep both taxes. If we make any compromise, we would want back both the EITC and a real estate transfer tax.

If your report is correct, the decision between a quarter-penny increase in the sales tax and a 0.4% transfer tax is correct is a no-brainer.

The quarter penny sales tax would raise $15 million per year in revenues and the 0.4 transfer tax over $50 million per year. That might sound good to some but the need for school construction is so great that the $35 million difference between the two would have to be made up with another five cent increase in the property tax. And that tune would have to be played over and over in succeeding years. That one decision would cost the taxpayers of Wake County a continuing succession of five cent property tax increases year after year.

The counties Blue Ribbon Commission told us that we have a $1.5 billion gap to fill over the next five years ..that was before Judge Manning's decision discouraging year-round schools increased the bill by as much as roughly $200 million over five years.

Think of the damage a constant succession of property tax increases will do to lower income folks on a fixed income or to small businesses. But does Paul Wilms and the development lobbies leadership care about that? - (although some individual developers have broken away from the lobby's position.) Worrying about taxpayers is not Paul Wilms' job. Sadly, even the NC Senate leadership that we have elected to represent us, doesn't seem to care either. And why won't either the Senate leadership or the developers lobby let us make our own decisions in a referendum?

The fact is that neither tax is big enough by itself. The 0.4% transfer tax should be raised to match the 1% allowed six NC counties represented by Senator Basnight - the Senate's leader.

I am dumbstruck and totally amazed by the Senate leadership's unwillingness to recognize the crisis all of us in Wake County are in.

Stan Norwalk
WakeUP Wake County

A transfer tax is a sales tax on all real estate transactions involving land, new residential construction as well as timber, construction of offices, factories, retail shops, as well as existing residences. It is paid every time a deed changes hands.

For new development, it is paid when a developer buys unimproved land, when improvements such as streets and utilities are made and lots sold to builders, and when builders sell new homes, office buildings or shopping malls.

When the NC Association of Realtors calls it a "home tax", that is not accurate. The only tax on homes is the property tax, paid by ALL homeowners every year. For those persons who intend to live in their home indefinitely, the only time that a transfer tax would be paid is when their estate sells their home. The typical homeowner, who sells their home and moves every seven years, would pay it at those times.