[RP TownTalk] Should apartments pay their fair share in taxes?

[Roland Walker]

>  Strangely, large apartment buildings are currently exempt from the
>  town's rental license fee. We should establish a per apartment
>  rental license fee that applies to all apartments.

We do have such a fee.  It is $75/unit.

This could be discovered by looking at the revenue side of the current
budget, or by reading chapter 42 of the code.

R

On 6/5/07, Rob Oppenheim <oppenheim at email.com> wrote:
>
>
>  Apartments pay a lot less in property taxes (per family) than do single
> family homes.
>
>  Property taxes on houses in our town run about $1,500 per home,
>  and only about $280 per apartment! (This is the Riverdale Park
>  portion of the property taxes).
>
>  True, apartments do not get trash pickup, but they do get all the
>  other town services. Trash pickup is less than 15% of our budget,
>  so apartments get about 85% of the town's services while paying
>  less than 20% of the taxes.
>
>  Strangely, large apartment buildings are currently exempt from the
>  town's rental license fee. We should establish a per apartment
>  rental license fee that applies to all apartments.
>
>  If such a fee were just $10/month per apt ($120/year) that would
>  generate about $100,000 in revenue. I think it should be even higher.
>
>  (To be fair, the fee should be less for smaller buildings, say those
>  with 30 or fewer units, as smaller buildings pay proportionally more
>  property taxes per unit than do the larger buildings.)
>
>  There are other taxes that might be more equitable too.
>  Such as a utility tax (Hyattsville has one, we do not).
>
>  Rob Oppenheim
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