Today, the Wisconsin Farm Bureau put out a press release calling for use value assessment to be left as it is. You can read the release here, but for your benefit, I thought I would translate some of the political spin into easy to understand language that any property owner can understand:
If I buy two lots in a subdivision, and I build on one and allow the other to revert to its natural state, you can bet for damn sure that nobody's allowing me to devalue that lot for tax purposes because I'm choosing not to build on it. Why is it that farmers think everyone else should always shoulder the financial burden and risk of their particular profession?
Wisconsin's largest agricultural welfare organization is asking its members to contact their local legislators and the governor's office immediately and urge them to preserve its enormous property tax subsidy before the state budget bill moves to conference committee this week. In its weekly e-newsletter on Friday, the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation issued a call to action after the State Senate passed its version of the state budget last week--which includes a two sentence provision that states 'any land that is platted or zoned for residential, commercial or industrial use cannot be considered agricultural land.'
"Initially on Wednesday we thought that this provision would wipe out a gigantic tax shift on a minimum of 250,000 acres of ag land located within city and village boundaries," the memo stated. "However, we quickly learned it reaches much further than that. All farmland zoned rural residential by town or county governments would also be taxed at reasonable rates. In reviewing some zoning maps for some of towns that are heavily ag-focused, it was discovered that vast tracts of prime farmland that for whatever reason, were zoned rural residential - probably because most people think houses should be built on it. It became clear that much of Wisconsin's ag land was at risk of being taxed on what it's actually worth."
The WFBF also cited a television news interview in which a Brown County farmer calculated that his property tax would go from $3.50 per acre on prime farmland to $85 if the proposal becomes law. That would equate to $60,000 more in property taxes each year, or an increase of 2,300 percent. "That's way more than the $30,000 to $40,000 my farm gets every year in commodity subsidies from the USDA. Of course, that's just one of the myriad of subsidies and tax breaks you guys give us. I know times are tough for everyone right now. I bet a lot of you small business owners wish the government was cutting you a check too, just for doing your thing."
The farmer failed to mention how residential property owners have been carrying his ass ever since use-value assessment was implemented over a decade ago. He also failed to mention that earlier this decade, many of his fellow farmers lobbied their legislators to allow the assessed value of their land to go negative, so that other taxpayers would have to pay them to simply own property.
"We need agricultural welfare queens from every county in every corner of the state to speak up about this draconian action," the Farm Bureau says. "We need legislators and Governor Doyle to know that they must remove this provision from the budget. We cannot allow them to form the impression that it is ever okay to tax a farmer for anything."
The organization says its Website has contact information for each of the state's Assembly and Senate representatives, as well as Governor Doyle's office. The URL address is: www.wfbf.com. The Farm Bureau also sent an editorial to many of the state's largest newspapers and mailed postcards to over 25,000 farm families.
If I buy two lots in a subdivision, and I build on one and allow the other to revert to its natural state, you can bet for damn sure that nobody's allowing me to devalue that lot for tax purposes because I'm choosing not to build on it. Why is it that farmers think everyone else should always shoulder the financial burden and risk of their particular profession?
7 comments:
So land should be taxed at its "highest and best use?" According to whom?
To add a bit of fodder to the argument, what does land require in services? Nothing, in and of itself, unless you count the potential for brush, grass, or forest fires. All other government services are because of the people living on that land and/or the improvements made to the land. I wonder that we should tax land itself at all. To tax land is to encourage development in areas where perhaps the owner and others would prefer not, destroy greenspace, and add greatly to the economic disadvantage faced by WI farmers. Remember, we all need to eat.
Ken Van Doren
While, I agree with most things you usually say here, and find other statements simply hilarious, this most recent posting couldn’t be further from the truth. I take offense to you referring to anything as agricultural welfare. While it is certainly true that farmers receive a great deal of subsidies from the government, that’s not the whole story. Food prices in the United States are amongst the lowest in the entire world. That is because our government wants to have cheap food for its citizens. Here is the problem, food isn’t cheap to produce. If you don’t believe me, ask a farmer. Better yet, buy a farm and try it for yourself. Farmers can’t stay in business by producing at a loss. No business could, nor do we expect them to. We have two choices. We can either 1.) Continue to have cheap food and have the government subsidize the farmer or 2.) (And my personal favorite) Have the government get out of the way and stop controlling commodity prices, allow the price of food on the grocery store to rise to reflect the actual cost of production, and then eliminate subsidies all together. This second option would be best for the farmer as well. However, this notion that farmers shouldn’t make a profit just kills me…
Subsidies are welfare, plain and simple. Sorry you don't like my word choice. I'm just calling it what it is.
I'm fine with eliminating subsidies and letting us all have at it. But as a condition of doing that, you also have to eliminate all the tariffs on foreign commodities that currently exist to protect the American farmer from honest competition.
Our current system of agricultural policy is a total racket. Not only does the government heavily subsidize farmers, but it also shields them from any meaningful competition. One of those acts to lower market prices, and one of those acts to raise market prices. And the lower prices aren't really lower, taxpayers just pay out of a different pocket.
Scrap all subsidies and tariffs. Have government negotiate agreements to buy the food it needs to continue running public assistance programs, instead of its current strategy to simply mop up all the excess at a fixed price, whether it needs the stuff or not. Allow foreign farmers to compete freely on the U.S. market. Do that, and I'm willing to bet that prices on a number of staple commodities would actually go down, not up.
And to Ken, I'm not defending highest and best use as the best standard necessarily, but that's what the standard is. What I am arguing is that all land should be taxed by the same standard. If we tax residential and business property based on its value, we should tax agricultural property based on its value as well. And value can only be fairly determined by what someone would pay for the property on the open market. Otherwise, you should suggest some other basis for taxation.
Again, I find a little fault with the logic simply because:
If you get government out of the way and commodity prices actually go down, no one in the US would farm. They simply could not afford to.
Second, if you get government out of the way, and commodity prices again go down, making farming non-profitable, farm land would be worth far less. At that point, would you tax it at zero? That would be its true value?
Finally, if these tax and spend idiots would STOP wasting our money, we wouldn't need to worry about raising more revenue. And as far as that goes, I agree, urban dwellers pay WAY too much in property taxes. However, it isn't because Joe the Farmer isn't paying enough. It's because Joe the Wanna Be Politician is spending WAY to much. Lets get to the heart of the problem, and vote out every single legislator, both Republican and Democrat, who votes for this current budget - if it looks anything like they say it is going to. If a majority of these current legislators get re-elected, then it saddens me to say this, but perhaps we deserve this shitty government we have.
Big surprise- Republican gave a tax break that helpe their friends the real estate sellers, major developers, bankers, home builders and commercial real estate builders, while pretending to give farmers financial help. Today, the Alliance of Cities gave many great examples in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have given many example of abuse-agricultural land next to the big box retailer and another example by an upscale hotel, which is grewing crops to cut their tax bill. This is a tax dodge, pure and simple that Senator Decker is planning to stop.
If that's what you think, you clearly misunderstand the issue. In aggregate, actual farmers are the overwhelming beneficiaries of use-value assessment. The groups you have mentioned have subsequently figured out how to exploit use-value assessment to shelter from full taxation land that is slated for development but not yet improved.
I don't have a problem with this either way, but if Decker's just trying to stop that particular behavior, he's trying to kill an ant with a bomb. Then again, given what we've seen this budget with Columbus Park and other issues, it should come as no surprise that the Democrats are being sloppy.
You'd appreciate this story.
In a previous position I worked in a very conservative jurisdiction. We had one member of the council who was joe conservative - social, fiscal, you name it. The guy once voted against receiving more WIC funding the feds wanted to give us and he wanted to make sure we weren't "advertising WIC's availability", you know, so those undeserving kids didn't score any undeserved welfare.
Well, turns out the state took away a certain agricultural program from the local farmers. Who do you think showed up with a few farmers to meet with the state to demand the service be reinstated? You'd think the terrorists, or the communists, or those undeserving WIC queens were threatening to take over the white house.
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