The Herald reported that property taxes in Marysville will go up 6 percent (“Marysville OKs 6% tax boost,” Nov. 17). The report should have stated that the tax-rate will go up 6 percent.
I’m not concerned about Marysville in particular but more in people’s understanding of a tax increase vs. a tax-rate increase. A tax-rate increase gets multiplied by the inflation-boosted value of the item being taxed. For example, when a home gets re-assessed at 10 percent more due to inflation, the taxes on that home go up 10 percent. The government gets its tax increase automatically. If there’s a 6 percent increase in the tax rate, the taxes on that home go up by 16.6 percent!
If the cost of services, road maintenance (per home), schools (per child), etc. increases with inflation, there should be absolutely no reason to increase taxes beyond that amount.
Monroe
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