Spot Reassessments

Carbon County, in particular Jim Thorpe School District, has been facing "spot reassessments" for some time now.  They are not called that - it is really the School District appealing a property's assessed value based upon a sales price (since the assessment was set to be 50% of the "market value" when the last County-wide reassessment was done about 6 or so years ago).  Prior tho that the property values had not been reassessed in many many years (other than bumped based upon building permits).  With market values declining, will our friends at te School District seek lower assessments based upon the new market values?  I doubt it!

The practice has had a chilling impact on real estate sales - but has not collapsed the market totally - because a new buyer may be paying 2 or 3 times the tax that  his neighbor is paying simply because the current owner just biught and his neighbor has not.  This seems blatantly unfair to me (but note that I am not a lawyer or a tax person) and certainly not a uniform way to distribute the tax burden.

While many a new Buyer has appealed the process's result, the local and State courts seem to uphold the principal.  In a bipartisan attempt to close this alarming loophole in Pa Tax regulations, a State Senator (Rhoades, R- Schuylkill  County) and a State Representative (Seip, D - Schuylkill  County) had introduced Senate Bill 1247 and House Bill 1438, respectively to close the loophole.  These Bills passed both houses of the State Legislature and it seemed that we would get a break from this onerous loophole.

Well - what do you think has happened?  Our Governor (Rendell, D) has VETOED the legislation!  This is the guy who says casinos in the state will generate property tax relief!!  I guess he can afford to do that since he has a new way into our pockets via an unfair real estate tax loophole that is now sure to be exploited by every School District in tax hungry PA.  I gues w ecan hope for the Legislature to dso the right thing and OVERRIDE the VETO but I would not hold my breath waiting for that to happen either.  He even had the gall to say that [art of the reason he vetoed the legislation was the deliberative process did not have enough time to ensure that there would be reasonable protection to ensure that all homeowners carry their fair share of the property tax burden!!  What about the fair share to those who recently purchased their dream or decided to invest in Pa by purchasing a vacation home or an income/tourist generating rental property naar one of the many resort areas in Carbon County??  I guess for them, paying 2x or 3x the property tax compared to the previous owner is FAIR Enough!!  WHEN WILL WE WAKE UP?