https://chestertownspy.org/2025/03/07/delegate-moons-fiscal-folly-tax-spend-repeat-by-clayton-mitchell/ Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Chestertown Sat, 08 Mar 2025 04:45:29 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 https://chestertownspy.org/2025/03/07/delegate-moons-fiscal-folly-tax-spend-repeat-by-clayton-mitchell/#comment-761213 Sat, 08 Mar 2025 04:45:29 +0000 https://chestertownspy.org/2025/03/07/delegate-moons-fiscal-folly-tax-spend-repeat-by-clayton-mitchell/#comment-761213 While Mr. Mitchell is quick to castigate Delegate Moon for his proposed new tax on business to busness services in an effort to address our looming budget deficit, it is curious that he overlooks a potentially significant existing source of new tax revenue.
Specifically, a little known provision of the Maryland tax code grants owners of agricultural use property (regardless of zoning) a “Preferential Assessment” of $500/acre for farmland and $125/acre for woodland acreage. In comparison, residential and commercial property is assessed every three years at its fair market value which, in 2022, ranged from a low of $5541/acre in Garrett county to a high of $13,587/acre in Baltimore county. As a result, owners of these properties have had to shoulder a vastly disproportionate share of state and local property tax bills.
Given the percentage of state land in agricultural use, adoption of more balanced and fair property assesment rates for agricultural use property would likely generate far more new revenue than tax increase proposals currently under consideration. If done judiciously, such action would probably neither imperil the amount of instate lands dedicated to crop production and other agricultural pursuits nor unduly tax agricultural use property owners who have enjoyed unchanging preferrential property tax rates for decades.

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