In 1978, California voters passed the famous Prop. 13, keeping property taxes in a holding pattern that has held quite securely for more than 30 years. On the November ballot, we have Prop. 15, which will move taxes on businesses and corporations that own land and real estate worth over three million dollars. Prop 15 does not affect individual private homeowners at all.
A yes on Prop 15 means you want to make commercial and industrial property owners with land worth over three million dollars, except farmland and other commercial agriculture,(not a big factor in Culver City) start paying property taxes based on their properties’ current market value. This would create a “split roll” tax, meaning this increase in property taxes would affect businesses and corporations, not individual homeowners.
You may get mailers that try to persuade you that ‘property taxes will skyrocket’ is Prop 15 passes. Check out who is sending these flyers, and know that there is no homeowners association in the city or the state that would fund that message; it is coming from corporate interests.
A no vote on Prop 15 means you want commercial and industrial property owners with property worth more than three million dollars to continue paying property taxes tied to the property’s market value when those businesses and corporations bought them.
It’s a way to keep some of the benefits of Prop. 13 – keeping homeowners in their homes – and eradicating some of the problems – letting hugely profitable businesses skip out on paying a fair amount of tax.
It’s called “Schools and Communities First” because property tax is where we get the revenue for school districts. It’s a simple way to right a long-term wrong.
Vote Smart.
Judith Martin-Straw
There are no real assurances how this added revenue from splitting the tax rolls would be used by school districts. They could use it to pay down their district’s unfunded pension liabilities. There are no assurances that any of this new revenue generated would even make it into the classroom.
In order to raise the $10 to $12 billion dollars in new annual revenue promised by Prop 15 supporters, the assessed valuation of the small number of commercial properties in our state contained in corporate portfolios worth over $3 million dollars (8%) would have to be raised about $1.1 trillion dollars.
No one has really talked about this scenario: What if you, as individual investor, own 3 commercial properties and two of them–currently under Prop 13– were being assessed over the $3.0M limit of Prop 15. You have a third parcel that is now assessed under Prop 13 at $300K. Would this third, smaller property also be caught up in the new market price reassessment?