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

Tue Jun 5 22:59:24 UTC 2007

I am saddened when I see a former elected official make blatantly  incorrect
statements when he knows better.

All apartment units in the town are subject to a license fee of $75 per
unit, whether a building has 3 units or 180 units.  See Code Section 42-6.
For FY06-07, this amounted to revenues of almost $70,000 to the town. Such
license fees have been in place for decades.

This same former official also wants to ignore that apartment houses are
assessed by the state department of assessments and taxation, not the town
Complain to SDAT about their methodology. The town's commercial and
industrial properties also have different assessment rules.

Also, he wants to ignore that his landlord (since he is not a listed owner
of his home) deducts both all of the real estate taxes and mortgage interest
from their federal and state income taxes.  So, when it comes to paying
personal income tax  to the town, he gets a break there (  the town gets
17.5% of the county piggy-back tax from the state tax return).

I, as a person beginning my 38th year of residence in my apartment, have no
such deductions.

Now, let's look at the services that the town provides  to apartment
dwellers for these "inadequate" revenues.  It is police protection.  Each of
the six wards have similar numbers of residents as required by the federal
law.

I have chosen to look at the police calls for May, 2007 in Wards 1, 2 and 5.
Wards 1 and 2 have few apartments.  Ward 5 is all apartments.

Ward 1 had 177 calls for service.  Ward 2 had 122 calls for service.  Ward 5
had 29 calls for service.

In May 2005, I analyzed the town's real estate base.  These are the results:

Riverdale Park Assessments

Type                        Amount                  Percentage
Single Family        $180,433,374       54.88%
Rural Residential   $1,974,836          0.60%
Apartments             $23,715,820          7.21%
Commercial           $51,093,968        15.54%
Industrial                  $64,047,288         19.48%
TIT                              $3,085,676             0.94%
Commercial Condo    $4,144,614      1.26%
Industrial Condo    $273,996                0.08%

Total    $328,769,572

While the dollar amount has increased, the percentages are probably similar
to those of 2005. 

So, as a rough order of magnitude calculation, between real estate taxes and
personal income taxes, families in single family homes pay for approximately
one third of the town's budget while receiving 3/4 or more of the Town's
services.

Gerry Kiernan     

From: Rob Oppenheim <oppenheim at email.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 15:46:06 -0400
To: TownTalk <towntalk at riverdale-park.org>
Subject: [RP TownTalk] Should apartments pay their fair share in taxes?

 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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