Property
Tax Forms
Open
Space 1-d-1 (Agricultural Exemption)
Acreage
tracts used primarily for the production of agricultural
products are granted a special appraisal for tax purposes
that sets "taxable" value based on the productivity
of the land. Rather than pay taxes on the full "market"
value of farm/ranch land, the owner pays only on a nominal
price per acre determined through market conditions
as applied to a formula set by law.
So
long as the property remains in agricultural production
it is taxed on the nominal per acre value. The catch
is: if the property is diverted to some other use (home
sites, for instance), the difference between the very
low Open Space tax amounts and the much, much higher
"market value" taxes is back-assessed for the previous
five years! This is the so-called "agricultural property
rollback," and the tax amounts collected under this
circumstance can be enormous.
A
rather extensive discussion of 1-d-1 qualification and
guidelines is available under Property
Tax Justice.
Download
the MSWord version here,
the Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version here.
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