Letter: Douglas taxes rising faster than the rest

It is that time of year, again. Last week we received our property tax bills and I joined many of you in examining the bill to see who whacked us this year. Same old story, the fiscally irresponsible are at it again.

The tax increase under discussion is the only rate that is truly controlled by the commissioners and is called "County General" on the tax bill. As it sounds, this is the tax revenue which goes to the county general fund and is used for, more or less, whatever the commissioners desire. On your tax bill you will find a rate of .3431, an increase of 5.4% from last year.

Although most readers probably understand how the property tax is calculated, I will provide a short review. The tax rate is the number applied to each $100 of assessed value. The assessed value is 35 percent of the appraised value. The appraised value is suppose to be the "actual" or retail value of the property. It is a actually a more complex calculation of values of sales in your area and allowed depreciation and other stuff to keep plenty of people employed by the government, and the public confused.

Let's put this together. Assume that one has a home worth $150,000. The amount of tax that would be paid to the general fund this year would be .3431 (the tax rate) times 525 (.35 X 150,000 / 100) or $180.13. The 525, again, is 35 percent of the actual value divided by 100 because the rate is applied to each $100 of assessed value.

Now, we will look at how this works when we calculate the taxes collected from the entire county. We will start with the last year of the previous commission, 1996-97. Remember that Nevada runs government on a fiscal year that runs from the first of July one year to the end of June the next year. So, 1996-97 is the period from July 1,1996 to June 30, 1997.

The tax rate for the general fund under that commission was .2804 and had actually been decreased while they were in office. The total assessed value in the county was just under $1.27 billion. Multiplying, we find that they collected about $3,560,000.

Under the current commission we had the following changes. In 1997-98, they raised the rate to .2901 on an assessed value of some $1.32 billion resulting in tax collection of almost $3,840,000. Then in the tax year 1998-99, they again raised the rate to .3069 on an assessed value of just over $1.37 billion or about $4,210,000. Then, in the tax year, 1999-2000, they again raised the rate to .3254 on an assessed value of over $1.41 billion or a total of just under $4,600,000. Finally, this year, 2000-2001, they again raised the rate to .3431 on an assessed value of just less than $1.46 billion or about $5,000,000.

The bottom line is that in just four years of this commission, the taxes collected for the general fund were increased from $3,560,000 to $5,000,000 or an increase of $1,440,000. That is an increase of over 40 percent. Many do not catch the compounding complexities of an increase in the tax rate as well as the increase in the assessed value. The amount of tax increase for each property owner will depend on their increase in assessed value and the 22.4 percent increase in the tax rate.

Personally, my taxes to the general fund are up 32 percent in these four years. I find that repulsive but an indication of what government is doing to us at all levels. Actually, the federal and state governments are pikers compared to the county.

Think about it.

AL WALKER

Gardnerville