Full Citation
Title: Good Intentions Lead to Difficult Decisions-The New Senior Property Tax Freeze Program in Tennessee
Citation Type: Working Paper
Publication Year: 2007
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Abstract: In November 2006, Tennesseans voted to amend the state constitution to allow local governments to freeze property taxes (on homesteads) for certain low-income senior citizens. The General Assembly is responsible for setting an income and/or wealth constraint that establishes eligibility to the program, but local governments themselves are responsible for the cost of any locally authorized tax freeze program. As a result, the cost of any local low income senior tax freeze will be financed either by local taxpayers excluded from the program or by local budget cuts, or some combination of the two. The purpose of this report is threefold: using several different household income threshold levels, (1) estimate the number of eligible senior households at each income threshold in each county, (2) estimate the total value of residential assessments accounted for by these eligible senior households (at each income threshold and for each county), and (3) provide preliminary estimates of the impact of the various income thresholds on the property tax base in each Tennessee county. The number of impacted senior households and the value of assessments impacted by the tax freeze were estimated using information made available from the 2005 American Community Survey (U. S. Census); specifically data extracted from the 2005 Public-Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) for Tennessee. This data source provided specific information for twelve counties and general information useful in estimating the needed data for the balance of Tennessee counties. The estimated data produced from the PUMS source was then integrated with known information on the distribution of property assessments in Tennessee counties (residential versus commercial, industrial, and utility assessments) to produce estimates of the percent of overall assessments impacted by a tax freeze program.
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Authors: Chervin, Stanley M.
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Institution: Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations
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Publisher Location: Nashville, TN
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Other
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