Sunday, June 25, 2006

OK, Selmites...time to calculate your tax increase

Since we are about to get a 25% property tax increase on the town taxes here in Selma, you may want to find out your future tax burden. Our rate currently is 44 cents per $100 value. Add the 11 cents per $100 increase to find your new tax rate for the town. Remember that this does not include the county rate. The current tax rate for the county is 78 cents per $100.

If you don't know your present tax value, go to this site, which is the Johnston County Tax Payment site. Look up your property online and you will find its tax value. Take that value and divide by 100. Multiply that figure by the .44 value to find your current tax liability. Repeat that multiplication by using the new .55 figure to find the new tax liability. Subtract the two figures to find how much your taxes are going up.

Repeat the calculation with the .78 figure to find your county tax liability. Add that to your new town tax liability and you now know what your total property tax bill will be for the year, since the county collects the town tax.

Next, remember this next year when we again have municipal elections. I exhort you to make a change. I have sympathy only for those who are on their first terms on the town council, since this problem is newly inherited for them and they are having to deal with problems created by previous councils. To my knowledge only Jeff Weaver and Charles Hester are in their first terms of service. I have little sympathy for those who have served more than one term thus far. The rest are on their second term or more. They have had plenty of opportunities to question, investigate, disapprove, and limit spending.

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