
{"id":1935,"date":"2008-02-21T08:58:03","date_gmt":"2008-02-21T16:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2008\/02\/21\/transfer-tax-ok%e2%80%99d-for-may-ballot\/"},"modified":"2008-02-25T07:29:33","modified_gmt":"2008-02-25T15:29:33","slug":"transfer-tax-ok%e2%80%99d-for-may-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/02\/21\/transfer-tax-ok%e2%80%99d-for-may-ballot\/","title":{"rendered":"Transfer tax OK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d for May ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Susan Dickson<\/strong><br \/>\nStaff Writer<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously on Tuesday to put a land transfer tax on the May ballot. <\/p>\n<p>Voters will decide whether property sellers will pay a 0.4 percent land transfer tax. If the measure passes, the county could begin collecting funds during the 2008-09 fiscal year. <\/p>\n<p><!--more-->In this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s state budget, the Legislature gave counties the option of a 0.4 percent land transfer tax or a quarter-cent sales tax increase to help compensate for money taken away from counties in a deal to turn responsibility for paying Medicaid over to the state. <\/p>\n<p>As a result of the budget deal, counties lost state-supplied school construction money this year and will lose some sales tax revenue in coming years. <\/p>\n<p>According to county budget director Donna Coffey, the land transfer tax would yield a little more than $4 million in annual revenue, while the sales tax increase would yield just over $3 million. <\/p>\n<p>Commissioners said they preferred the land transfer tax to the sales tax because of the regressive nature of a sales tax. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I certainly think there are pros and cons in terms of impact, regardless of which one of these new taxes that we pursue, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no way that we can completely insulate all of the people we care about in this county from this tax,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Commissioner Moses Carey said. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153While a lot of people think that sales tax is fairer, and that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to touch everyone, and everyone is going to pay, I think that asking people to pay every day from current income, when they have no current income or when they have no increase in income \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 is a bit much.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Realtors have come out against the land transfer tax, saying it unfairly burdens a small population during a slow real estate market. Several county residents spoke against the land transfer tax, holding signs and wearing buttons opposing it. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I prefer no new tax at all,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Ryan Miller, an Orange County educator and part-time farmer. However: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I would support a sales tax. I would share the burden with all of the county residents, including our transient residents.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n<p>Others spoke in favor of the land transfer tax. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want to stress that the residents need to support services administered by the county,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d county resident Margaret Misch said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153[The land transfer tax] is a reasonable solution to the funding needs and it does not place a burden on the less affluent who pay sales and income taxes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>In September, the board voted to put a tax referendum on May\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ballot rather than this past November\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ballot, expressing concern that there was insufficient time to educate the public. In October, the board formed a Local Revenue Options Education Advisory Committee to educate the public regarding the tax referendum. <\/p>\n<p>The board on Tuesday also heard the results of a county-funded telephone poll, conducted by Hertzog Research, Feb. 6-13, to determine voter support for the land transfer and sales tax options.<\/p>\n<p>The poll found that about 48 percent of likely voters said they would support a sales tax, while 43 percent said they would support a land transfer tax, if they had to choose between the two. According to Mark Hertzog of Hertzog Research, those results are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153statistically a tie,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because of the poll\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s four-percent margin of error. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Susan Dickson Staff Writer The Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously on Tuesday to put a land transfer tax on the May ballot. Voters will decide whether property sellers will pay a 0.4 percent land transfer tax. If the measure passes, the county could begin collecting funds during the 2008-09 fiscal year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,30],"tags":[77,76,78],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-top-story","tag-budget","tag-land-transfer-tax","tag-sales-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}