Failure of property tax relief bills highlights folly of GOP fiscal policies

NC Newsline

North Carolina Republican lawmakers’ mad rush to slash income taxes on corporation and the wealthy in recent years has produced many disastrous impacts. See, for example, our threadbare and crumbling public schools.

But there’s another big and negative impact: the effect on property taxes.

Thanks to fast rising home prices, there’s a growing need to update and raise property tax exemptions for seniors and other homeowners on fixed incomes so they’re not forced out of their homes.

Unfortunately, because of plummeting income tax revenues, the state is much less able to aid county governments in filling revenue holes that would develop if property tax exemptions were raised.

And so it is that counties have been forced, reluctantly, to oppose bills in the state legislature that would raise property tax exemptions.

The bottom line: By slashing income taxes, state legislators have unjustly shifted responsibility for funding core public services further onto people of modest means like senior homeowners. All North Carolinians should demand better.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.