Taxes

There are some renewal levies on my ballot this November. I thought you all may be interested in what I learned last April about replacement and renewal levies.

They are all tax increases!

No if, ands or buts about it. They are all tax increases.

The ballot language is misleading. Especially when it calls a replacement a reduction. This is purposeful deception.

Even when the phrases "no increase in millage" or "reduction in millage" are used, it is still a tax increase.

Levy proponents often give sample costs for sample properties when they state their case. They generally do not give the effective millage, that is, how the new costs compare to the current cost of the levy to be replaced. Obviously, to do so would defeat their purpose. Without this information each taxpayer needs to research what he or she currently pays for each levy and make the comparison on their own. Do you know anyone who does this? I don't either.

A major contribution to voter confusion is that levy taxes are not computed with voted millage. Instead, in Ohio anyway, effective millage is used to make the computations. This is due to Ohio H.B. 920, the common moniker of Ohio Revised Code 319.301 . Please note: property values generally increase at a faster rate than the funds needed to run local government agencies. Effective millage is a revenue stabilizer: It keeps revenue to a school district, for example, stable while the property values contributing increase and new construction is added to the tax base. It does this by having a declining scale of millage collected as the levy ages. Effective millage is the millage that decreases as property values rise.

The Tax Commissioner determines effective millage for each levy. Effective millage is closest to value in voted millage when the tax is new. The gap between voted and effective millage grows the longer the tax is in effect.

While Ohio Revised Code, 5705.02 does not permit taxes of more than ten mills on each dollar of valuation without a vote of the people, taxes under this ten-mill umbrella are not reduced as property values increase or as the levies age. The government agencies that rake in the dough from these taxes have built in increases each time your property value goes up. Your vote does not effect them at all.

I was made wise to how these taxes are computed by listening to a presentation (and taking notes and reviewing a treatise on the subject) by Mrs. Carolyn J. Blow. She gives some examples relating to her county in this article.