How Guilford County Built a Tax Increase Into “Revenue Neutral”
The proposed 61.9¢ property tax rate is 19% above exact levy neutrality
The County’s official “revenue-neutral” tax rate wasn’t actually the mathematically neutral rate.
The County’s budget shows the exact levy-neutral tax rate after revaluation was 52.00 cents per $100 of value.
The County’s chart (Page 72) shows;
Prior levy: $544,707,662
New assessed value: $104,749,520,000
Exact neutral rate: 52.00¢;
52¢ was the rate that actually kept revenues flat after revaluation.
Guilford County applied an additional “historical growth factor”. The County multiplied the exact neutral rate by a 2.42% “average annual growth” assumption, which increased the official “Revenue Neutral Tax Rate” (RNTR) to 53.26¢.
The County built in a ~$13 million tax increase into the official definition of “neutral” before the proposed increase to 61.9¢ even began, even though it’s counted every year;
The recommended tax rate is 61.9 cents per 100 dollars of valuation, which is 11.5 cent reduction from the prior year, and the lowest property tax rate in over 20 years.
Guilford County Manager Victor Isler
The proposed 61.9¢ property tax rate is;
about 16% above the County’s official growth-adjusted “neutral” rate,
but 19% above exact/actual neutrality
≈ $101.35 million tax increase for property owners after the County Manager said the budget was only going up $89 million.
The key sentence in Guilford County’s press release says “The revenue-neutral tax rate is 53.26 cents per $100 of assessed property value based on the state’s prescribed calculation.”
Hence (Page 71);
Will the headlines say 10% or 19%?
Will they say $88,186,176 or $101,352,000?
The 53.26¢ “Revenue Neutral Tax Rate” (RNTR) ~$557.9M, meaning it’s not going up from $542,425,000, but roughly $15.5 million more than the FY2026 adopted budget due to the RNTR 2.42% '“growth adjustment”.
Almost the entire revenue increase in the proposed budget is coming from property taxes;
Property Tax Increase; +$101.35M
Total Revenue Increase; +$103.1M
≈ 98.3% of the entire revenue increase
If property tax collections rise by more than $101 million, and the proposed rate is about 19% above real neutrality, why are taxpayers being told the story primarily through the lens of an “11.5 cent reduction”?
Same thing only different in an opposite way;
Financial (Investment) Plan Manipulation
If “the overwhelming majority of Envision Plans didn’t include investment costs” and unachievable goals have been ‘legally’ presented to clients, hundreds of thousands of clients and millions of others may be misinformed of the probabilities of achieving financial goals presented by Financial Advisors.
https://hartzman.blogspot.com/2020/09/financial-investment-plans.html