REAL ESTATE - Property Taxes

Folks have been grumbling about the recent increase in real estate assessments in Harrisonburg. I can't imagine why since the average productive person only pays 60-70% of their annual income in some kind of tax.

The complaint seems to be that the city is raising the tax assessed value of our property when the real value has gone down. Now, the first mistake we make is to believe that assessed value is what your home is really worth when the objective of the real estate tax system is to generate income for the city and not evaluate property. The system is suppose to be a fair way of taxing citizens according to their wealth so if your house is assessed at 10% more than its actual value, that is ok as long as every other property owner has an equally overvalued assessment.

I think we sometimes become so irritated by this property tax process that we don't see the real problem with our city government and that is spending. If the city didn't spend so much money, our taxes wouldn't be so high. Let's concentrate our concerns more on the spending side of the city budget and less on this irrational assessment process.

Jim