The city’s annual property assessments are up 14.3% this year, Charlottesville reports in a press release, with residential properties increasing by 15% and commercial property increasing by 11%. Last year they increased by 18.8%, so at least things have cooled down a bit, but not much. Hopefully somebody smarter than me will provide the internals on this — what the largest increase was, how different neighborhoods faired, etc.
Aren’t residential and commercial properties taxed at the same rate? If so, couldn’t we split those off and tax the two at different rates? That might allow the city to shift some of the burden off of homeowners and onto business owners, since the latter at least enjoys some income as a result of their structure, and since the assessment increases always seem to be less for businesses than for residences. I wonder if this has been done elsewhere and how well it’s worked.
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