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The final adjusted county property tax levy for 2016 is down more than $1.5 million dollars from the 2015 county property tax levy. The 2016 property tax rate will be $3.60 per thousand of assessed value, down more than 2 percent from 2015.
The final 2016 property tax levy of $106,070,428 is $574,479 lower than anticipated when the 2016 budget was adopted as a result of “omitted taxes.” Omitted taxes are the result of property ownership changing mid-year with the new owner not being entitled to exemption status that the previous owner may have been receiving.
For example, a senior citizen who has a senior exemption sells their home mid-year and the new owner does not qualify for the senior exemption. The new owner pays a pro-rated amount of taxes for the remainder of the year. Real Property Tax law requires these omitted taxes be deducted from the subsequent year’s levy prior to the final calculation of the tax rates.
Normally, omitted taxes range between $35,000 and $55,000 and have little impact on the final tax rate. However, in July 2015, the sale of property by IBM Corp. to GlobalFoundries resulted in GlobalFoundries paying $512,000 in pro-rated property taxes for the remainder of the year due to end of IBM’s payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT). Without the GlobalFoundries omitted taxes, the 2016 tax rate would have been $3.62 per thousand of assessed value
Moving forward in 2017 and beyond, the GlobalFoundries property will already be included in the tax base.
Dutchess County Budget Director Valerie Sommerville noted, “The levy is exactly what the Legislature adopted, with a slightly higher portion coming from properties that formerly had exemptions. There is no ‘windfall’ to the county. The adjustment in the rate ‘pays back’ the remaining property owners who paid slightly more in order to fund those exemptions.”
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