This is a followup to Post #1955.
As is our tradition here in the Town of Vienna, the Town once again screwed up the math on the legally-required Notice informing its citizens of the average increase in real estate tax bills for the coming fiscal year.
As a result, the Town says average real estate tax bills are rising just 3.3 percent. The correct figure is 6.2 percent, based on the data provided by the Town.
And — shown below — calculating that ain’t exactly rocket science. (Hint: Assessments went up 6.2 percent, and the proposed tax rate didn’t change, so … )
The irony here is that the sole purpose of this Notice is to provide citizens with an accurate calculation of the proposed increase in tax bills. That’s to allow citizens to offer informed comment at the annual public hearing on Town of Vienna property taxes, scheduled this year for April 29.
Year after year, the Town systematically understates the proposed increase in real estate tax bills, in this legally-required Notice. I don’t think there’s any intent to deceive. It’s just a simple and obvious math error. But, for some reason, the Town of Vienna refuses to fix it.
The details, briefly.
Currently, we pay 19.5 cents per $100 of assessed value. That’s on top of the Fairfax County rate. (You need to know this to understand the simple arithmetic, below.)
Source: Town of Vienna, downloaded 3/31/2024.
Now test your simple math skills.
Question: If the Town of Vienna leaves the tax rate unchanged, and real estate assessments go up (say) 10%, how much will real estate tax bills go up?
If you said “10 percent”, you get an A.
If you said “10 percent, duh”, you get an A+.
Now let’s read through the legally required “Notice of Proposed Real Property Tax Increase“, for FY 2025 (i.e., mid-2024 to mid-2025), as posted by the Town of Vienna in the Washington Times (reference).
This year, the Town is telling its citizens that:
- Real estate assessments are up 6.2%.
- The proposed tax rate is unchanged.
- So total real estate taxes are up 3.3% (!?)
Do I need to say that’s not correct? It’s not. The Town has gotten this wrong for years, probably from the very first time this notice was required. They’ve been informed of that fact. And nobody in Town government gives enough of a sh*t to be bothered to fix it.
What’s so astoundingly aggravating is the math is the entire reason this notice is required by the Commonwealth of Virginia (here’s the statute, but be warned that it’s a tough read). Before this notice was required, local governments only posted their proposed tax rate. But, because property values (assessments) keep rising, the increase in the tax rate doesn’t tell you what the increase in total taxes will be. (I.e., doesn’t tell you how much the average real estate tax bill will increase). You have to do a bit of math — combine the two — to know what the increase in the average tax bill will be. So Virginia required each local government to do the arithmetic — combining both the change in tax rate and the change in the property assessments — to allow citizens to know know how much their property tax bills were going up, on average.
Sooner or later, this ought to come back to bite them. But so far, that has not happened. I’ve made Town staff aware of this, I’ve talked to one Town Council member. This is, I think, the fifth (?) year that I’ve pointed out this error. And, guess what, it’s still wrong. And if I know the Town, it’s going to stay wrong until somebody sues them over it.
It’s easy enough to check
Just find another Virginia jurisdiction that, like Vienna, is proposing to leave its real estate tax rate unchanged. And see how their numbers look.
E.g., Prince William County.
Like the Town of Vienna, they are proposing no change in their current tax rate. (Which is 96.6 cents per $100, or 0.966 above). Their Proposed Notice (Google reference, .pdf) shows that assessments there are rising 4.89%, and that their tax bill increase (“Effective Rate Increase”) is therefore 4.89%. As highlighted by the BIG RED ARROWS that I have placed on the image of their Notice, above.
Like I said, this isn’t rocket science.
So, somehow, under the same law, when Prince William County leaves tax rates unchanged, the effective increase in tax bills equals the increase in assessments. But when Vienna does the same, the effective increase in tax bills is about half the increase in assessments. One of the two has to be wrong. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which one it is.
Edit: Addendum: How can I check thee, let me count the ways.
It’s not as if checking the math is a chore. There are multiple, independent ways to do so. Which makes the persistence of this error just that much more jaw-dropping. To those of us who care about numbers. Or taxes.
0: As above, find any other local government in Virginia that is not raising its tax rate, and examine their results, compared to the Town of Vienna results.
1: Use the spreadsheet that I provided for this calculation, years ago, on this blog. At the minimum, the formulas show the logic of the calculation. This spreadsheet:
Algebra Check, 2019 and now 2021 Tax Increase
2: Every other local government in this area gets it right. Just pick one, and ask to borrow their spreadsheet.
3: Send your Notice to any other local government, and ask them, as a courtesy, to check your figures. It would help if you note that the tax rate is unchanged, and highlight the two figures I’ve highlighted in the Notice just above.
4: Take any other Virginia local government’s Notice, take their figures, and run it through your spreadsheet, to demonstrate that you don’t get the right answer. The Prince William County Notice, posted above, would be an obvious place to start.
