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GA Senator Chip Rogers says he wants changes to property tax law in light of the recent housing market downturn.

People who buy foreclosed properties at bargain values are being taxed at much higher county assessments, says Republican State Senator Chip Rogers.

So he’s proposing that counties can only tax on the price of a home.

“If you buy a home this year and you don’t do anything,” says Rogers. “Whatever you paid for it, should be your assessment for that year.”

Rogers says he also wants assessment notices sent out every year, and allow for assessment appeals year- round.

He admits that the measure could backfire in a booming market, but he says his ultimate goal remains eliminating all property taxes.

Get ready to dig a little deeper, Cook County homeowners.

Under a new state law, you’ll be forced to pay slightly more of your property tax bill up front so county agencies, municipalities, school districts and other local governments can improve their bottom lines.

The so-called “accelerated billing” law — which sailed quietly through the General Assembly last year and applies only to Cook County — requires that the first installment of property taxes due March 2 be computed based on 55 percent of the total taxes paid last year, instead of the usual 50 percent.

The change is being spotlighted by county treasurer Maria Pappas, who is including fliers headlined “CALCULATION CHANGE 55%” in this year’s tax bills. Those bills began arriving in mailboxes this weekend, just days before the Feb. 2 primary.

Pappas said Monday she opposes the law. But support from other county leaders and Chicago government officials apparently helped it win approval in the Legislature, where it passed 48-8 in the Senate on April 1 and 67-46 in the House on May 19. Gov. Quinn signed it Aug. 14.

“Right now, people’s income fluctuates month by month, particularly those out of jobs and in between jobs,” said Rep. Jim Durkin (R-Western Springs), who voted against the change. “For people in very difficult situations trying to make their mortgage payments and just getting by, that additional 5 percent is significant.”

A homeowner who paid a $5,000 tax bill last year, for example, would have a first installment of $2,750 this year — $250 more than under the old law. But proponents point out that the change won’t hike the total taxes property owners will pay over the course of the year and could result in lower tax payments on the second installments of their bills.

“When confronted with the fact [local governments] can’t pay their bills, you feel this is one way to get a little more money into their funds,” said Sen. Louis Viverito (D-Burbank), the plan’s lead Senate sponsor.

“Historically, taxpayers are faced with a second property-tax installment that is higher than the first,” said Ashley Cross, a spokeswoman for Quinn. “This slight change aims to provide relief to taxpayers by helping to better balance the two payment cycles.”

There’s a slight chance homeowners who escrow their property taxes could see increases in their monthly mortgage payments based on the new law, said Frank Binetti, president of the Illinois Mortgage Bankers Association. Most lenders, however, should have adequate funds in reserve to cover homeowners’ bills.

“It’s not going to impact the lenders as much as the individual homeowner who pays their own taxes,” Binetti said. “They’re the ones who probably haven’t anticipated this.”

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“Once the proposed tax statements came out, the phone has been ringing off the hook,” Houston County Assessor Tom Dybing told the county board last week.

“Most of the calls were from landowners who wondered why their taxes on some parcels went up so much, while others varied so much. I had one farmer who had one parcel increase 40 percent and another parcel only went up two percent.”

Dybing said the state did away with limited market value to bring more money into their cash-strapped coffers. With limited market value, property was only taxed on a portion of the increase in valuation. Starting in 2010, landowners will be taxed on the entire increase.

“Property owners are now paying on 100 percent of the market value,” Dybing noted.

Another change, which has many landowners scratching their heads and pulling out their hair is that the state has decided only structures and the property they sit on qualify as seasonal recreational. Everything else that used to be considered seasonal recreational is now “rural vacant land,” which of course, is in a higher tax bracket.

“None of these changes were my idea,” Dybing noted. “The state makes the changes. We’re the messengers.”

Another change in property tax laws has to do with Green Acres. But, according to Dybing, he and other county assessors across the state have not had all of the changes explained to them. That will be coming, hopefully, later this month.

“We will be sending out letters to all of the property owners in the county who are currently enrolled in Green Acres to explain the changes as soon as we know what they will be.

“I don’t know if it was better to send the tax statements out the day before Thanksgiving so we’d have a four-day cooling off period, or if that made it worse,” Dybing added. “All I know is the phones have been very busy.”

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Even if a homeowner’s property assessment magically soars in Prince George’s County amid a severe real estate downturn, the county won’t be able to reap the benefits next year because of a complex system of tax laws.

The County Council is poised to pass legislation regarding the Homestead Property Tax Credit, a statewide tax limit designed to protect homeowners from large jumps in their property assessments year-to-year. It works like this: Say you bought a house for $100,000, and in your next assessment, the valuation jumps to $120,000–a difference of 20 percent. Because of the tax credit, localities in Maryland can only tax you on up to 10 percent of that increase in value. In this example, that would mean being taxed on up to $110,000.

Each locality gets to set its own Homestead Property Tax rate every year, ranging between 0 and 10 percent. Here’s a list of all the current rates.

More: Pr. George’s Property Tax Cap to be Lower Next Year

The failure of Arizona lawmakers and the governor to reach an agreement on a state budget — and permanently eliminate the state property tax, which was suspended in 2006 — means the tax automatically returns as planned in 2009.

For all intents and purposes, the time for lawmakers to repeal the levy has run out. State law requires county supervisors to set the tax rates Monday. That includes the state property tax, which is technically called a “county equalization tax.”

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For the past two years many local governments have been faced with a financial situation unprecedented in recent decades. The total value of taxable property within their jurisdictions, which yields property taxes that comprise a significant part of their operating revenue, has decreased rather than increased.

The significance comes in setting Florida tax rates.

In the past, one of the options local officials faced was to keep the current tax rate, which would allow a boost in revenue because property values were rising, or to adopt the “rollback rate,” a lower tax rate that would yield the same amount of property tax revenue as the previous year.

With falling tax roll values, however, some local governments are resorting to increasing tax rates just to stay even and to accomplish what the “rollback rate” was intended to accomplish when Florida property values were increasing.

Changes in Florida’s property tax laws that have occurred in recent years have made the situation even more confusing.

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Most New Jersey homeowners, already paying the highest property taxes in the nation, will not see a property tax rebate check next year under Gov. Jon Corzine’s revised 2010 budget proposal.

The updated budget, released Tuesday by Treasurer David Rousseau, keeps rebates for seniors and the disabled but eliminates them for everyone else.

Corzine’s original proposal, released in March, got rid of rebates for those earning more than $75,000. But with updated revenue projections coming up $2 billion short for the 2010 budget year, Rousseau said rebates were not sustainable this year.

“We simply cannot spend money that we don’t have,” Rousseau told the Assembly Budget Committee members Tuesday.

The move would save the state nearly a billion dollars and cost homeowners $950 on average; renters would miss out on an average $75 rebate, according to the Treasury Department.

New Jersey taxpayers already pay $7,000 a year on average in property taxes, or about twice the national average. Property tax rebate checks have been around since 1977.

Assembly Budget Chairman Louis D. Greenwald said the rebates should be restored “as soon as the economy turns around.”

Corzine’s revised budget also raises income taxes on the wealthy, reduces the amount of education and preschool funding he proposed in March and raises taxes on HMOs, among other things.

Earlier Tuesday, budget analyst David Rosen told lawmakers that income tax collections in budget year 2009 plummeted 19 percent and are projected to be nearly 10 percent down in the 2010 budget year, which begins in July.

“This is certainly the worst revenue report I’ve given to this Legislature and one that I never thought I’d be giving,” said Rosen, who has worked for OLS for 25 years.

Rosen said he expects a slow economic recovery, predicting that it would be at least 2014 before tax collections return to 2008 levels.

New Jersey’s revenue picture has deteriorated throughout the year. With income taxes, business and sales taxes each generating hundreds of millions less than anticipated and a constitutional requirement to keep the budget in balance, Corzine has had to make additional cuts to make up for the unexpected shortfall.

Last week, he announced that he will take $450 million from New Jersey’s rainy day fund, put off making aid payments to public school districts until July and trim the state’s contribution to the employee pension fund by $150 million to rebalance this year’s budget.

He also plans to cut another $150 million from state government with less than two months to go in the current fiscal year.

Republicans have criticized the Democratic governor , up for re-election in November , for using one-time fixes to plug budget holes, something he promised he wouldn’t do when he was running for office in 2005.

“It’s like musical chairs, and someone is going to be without a chair if we keep this up,” said Assemblyman Joseph Malone, R-Bordentown.

Under the budget revisions announced Tuesday, top earners in New Jersey will see an increase in income taxes. Millionaires will be taxed another half-percent and those making $400,000 to $500,000 will be taxed at 8 percent instead of 6.7 percent.

Business leaders said the tax increases will only serve to drive out high-income residents, who provide those most taxes.

“It’s an easy answer to say, ‘Tax the rich.’ But in the long-term, it will erode the tax base,” said Howard Cohen, managing partner and CEO of Edison-based accounting firm Amper, Politziner & Mattia.

Rousseau said income tax increase would affect about 61,000 of the nearly 4 million tax filers in New Jersey.

Besides rebate cuts, Corzine is reducing his proposed increase in education funding. He originally proposed a $300 million increase, but has reduced that to $271 million. That reduction includes getting rid of a planned expansion of preschool education in poor districts, saving $25 million.

The new plan also raises taxes on HMOs by 1 percent, which could result in higher premiums.

The budget proposal requires legislative approval by July 1, the start of the new fiscal year, and under the state constitution must be balanced.

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Communities across Metro Detroit are bracing for a flood of property tax appeals from homeowners, and some residents haven’t even received this year’s assessments.

A minor printing error has delayed the mailing of assessment notices in Dearborn. All 34,794 assessment notices were sent out Monday, forcing the city to miss a state mandated mailing deadline — at least 10 days before the boards of review meet. Dearborn is scheduled to start hearing appeals on Monday. City officials say they will extend hearing dates to accommodate all those who plan to appeal.

Dearborn is one of many communities throughout the region planning to schedule extra days so their boards of reviews can accommodate what is predicted to be a higher number of appeals this year as the economy worsens and more people are financially pinched.

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With irate property owners clamoring for relief, Illinois lawmakers passed a law in 1991 to cap skyrocketing real estate tax bills.

At the time, no one anticipated that more than 17 years later, the rate of inflation—the key measure used in the legislation to limit tax increases—would be less than 1 percent.

In 2008, the annual bump in the rate was an unprecedented 0.1 percent. That means most taxpayers can expect only slight increases in their 2009 tax bills, which are paid in 2010.

But it also means that many school districts and other government agencies will see only tiny increases in the property-tax revenues they will collect next year. And that has sent shock waves around the state, as school districts scramble to adjust their budgets and plan for cuts as early as next school year.

With tax referendum measures unlikely to succeed in the current recession, suburban districts are moving to eliminate everything from staff to band programs and sports teams as they try to cover teacher salaries and other costs that are going up by far greater than 0.1 percent.

“Property taxes are huge for us. They comprise about 56 percent of our revenue stream,” said Tom Hernandez, director of community relations for Plainfield Community Consolidated School District 202.

The tax cap as a theory works exactly as intended for taxpayers, he said, and municipalities and other home-rule communities can offset the cap through gas taxes and sales taxes.

“But we can’t do that,” he said. “We are limited to the rate of inflation and we are now taking a big hit from it.”

John Reiniche, assistant superintendent for business services at Orland School District 135, said his district and others have been closely watching the Consumer Price Index. While there have been no cutbacks in District 135 in personnel or programs as a direct result of the economy and tax cap, the situation will be front and center in setting a tentative budget by June.

“That will definitely be a point of conversation with our board coming down the road in 2010,” he said.

Most districts rely on local property taxes to cover the majority of their budgets and don’t anticipate the state coming to the rescue. The state already is behind on sending money to districts for special education, transportation and other costs.

The unease has reached Springfield, where lawmakers have begun filing legislation to change the so-called tax-cap law and provide relief for school budgets.

Taxpayer advocates are wary of any changes.

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