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New Orleans property tax bills will hit mailboxes soon
Source:
nola.com
- Jan 12, 2012
When the Orleans Parish School Board last week declined to reconsider its decision not to "roll forward" all of its property tax millages, New Orleans real estate tax bills for 2012 were finally set. Bills will go out in the next week; payments are due by Jan. 31.
Roughly two-thirds of property owners in the city -- those whose assessed valuations did not go up -- will see a very small decrease in their taxes. That's because the 2012 tax rate is down by about half a percent, from 147.58 mills to 147.06 mills.
In Algiers, the tax rate is slightly higher at 148.15 mills because the levee district for the west bank of the river has a higher millage than the one on the east bank.
What the changes mean in real terms is that the owner of a house valued at $300,000 will pay $11.70 less than they did this year, assuming the property was not revalued by Assessor Erroll Williams.
Tax rates could have fallen more steeply this year, because Williams revalued nearly half the 165,000 properties in the city, resulting in a jump of about 7 percent in the taxable value of property in the city.
By law, all agencies that receive tax money must "roll back" their tax rates after such a revaluation so that the new assessments don't automatically generate extra money. But the agencies -- including the School Board, the City Council, the Sheriff's Office, the Levee Board, the Sewerage & Water Board and various others -- may immediately "roll forward" the millage to the previous year's amount.
This year, every agency except the School Board opted to restore last year's tax rate, and even the School Board rolled its rate forward partially. That's why the net reduction is so modest.
The city's tax rate has historically been higher. It was 155.48 mills in 1991, and got as high as 188.34 mills in 2006. But the next year, after a major citywide revaluation of property, the rate fell by nearly a third, to 128.44 mills.
The millage rate has ticked up 14 percent since then. About half the increase came last year, when the City Council approved an increase of 7.74 mills sought by Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration. The city's tax rate is higher than most of the surrounding suburbs, with the exception of St. Tammany Parish, where some of the incorporated areas have slightly higher tax rates.
Category: Louisiana
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