Legislation just signed by Gov. Brown may help alert homeowners to the threat posed by per parcel property taxes. Parcel taxes have become one of the most insidious threats to home ownership because they can be imposed over and above the property tax limits set by Proposition 13.
Supported by a broad coalition lead by the California Taxpayers Association, Assembly Bill 2109 requires the Controller to maintain a publicly accessible data base relating to the imposition of locally assessed parcel taxes, including the type and rate of a parcel tax and the number of parcels subject to or exempt from the parcel tax. Finally, taxpayers will be able to see the extent of parcel taxes throughout the state and the costs to property owners.
Parcel taxes came about as a result of politicians never ending effort to circumvent the property tax limitations contained in Proposition 13. Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, Proposition 13’s authors, intended that taxes on property be limited to one percent of the taxable value and that the taxable value on the assessor’s books could not be increased by more than two percent annually.
To squeeze more from homeowners, local officials came up with the parcel tax, usually a uniform tax placed on each parcel of property within a community –although it can also be based on size.
To read the rest of this column please go to http://hjta.org/california-commentary/greater-transparency-threat-property-owners