Quote:
Originally Posted by Carleton Hughes
Among the tax sweeteners offered by states to welcome relocating businesses is Texas' easy-to-get farmland benefit. When the huge Fidelity Investments company bought a 300-acre plot near Dallas for a new office, it made sure to put 25 head of cattle on the land, which the Boston Herald found reduced its real-estate tax bill by about $360,000 a year under what it would pay without the cattle. [Boston Herald, 5-11-07]
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It’s called an Agricultural (Ag-) Exemption. Not sure what’s new about that. I would tend to believe most (if not all) states have something of the sort.
Randy knows all about it. We’ve even posted/mentioned it here in the past. The part of our property that the house sits on is kept to a minimum because of it. The rest of the property is ag-exempt with a small Black Angus heard (cow/calf weaning areas), or with hangar/airport business exemptions applied.
There’s not a chance in Hell that farmers/ranchers could afford to operate if they paid the same residential property tax rates that home owners do.
There’s a reason Perot has cattle on Alliance Airport property. A reason they bail hay (which counts as Ag.) off of the Texas Motor Speedway property. And it aint ‘cause they want ‘em to look moer like “Texas”.
What’s not mentioned, is the “Roll-back taxes”. The money owed, should the property loose it’s agricultural exemption. And they are rolled back five years !! i.e. We sold 25 acres off our place to a family that was to no longer use it for agricultural purposes. They built a house on it. It became their “residential” property. They lost the ag-exemption. The reason the contract said we were not to be held responsible for tax issues following the sale: They had to pay what would have been the taxes owed at residential rates for the 25 acres for the previous five years. Ouch!!
Stick a gas well on the property, and the whole tax thing really becomes a mess.
Randy and I have posted over that as well.