Leflore County farmers and those from whom they rent should get a break this time next year on their property taxes.
For the first time in a decade, the Mississippi entities charged with calculating how much income cultivatable land in the county should produce have lowered their estimate for most soil types.
“Hopefully this is the beginning when these farm values will stabilize,” Leflore County Tax Assessor Leroy Ware told the Greenwood Rotary Club earlier this week.
Farmers and other landowners have been griping for years about the year-over-year in-creases in the appraised value on their lands, even as commodity prices have fallen.
As opposed to other real property, such as homes and businesses, in which the taxable value is supposed to roughly match what the property could sell for, land values for tax purposes are based on the income the land is expected to generate. Those “use values” are provided to the state Department of Revenue by Mississippi State University’s Department of Agricultural Economics and the MSU Extension Service.
Starting a decade ago, Ware said, use values in Leflore County rose by about 9% a year, just under the 10% cap allowed in state law at that time. In 2018, the Legislature, under pressure from landowners, reduced the cap to 4%.
For the tax year 2020, which property owners will pay in 2021, the use value will be reduced by 4% for nearly three-fourths of Leflore County’s cultivatable land. One of the five soil types, whose quality, according to Ware, falls between soybean land and prime cotton land, will see a 4% increase instead. The tax assessor said he did not know why the difference.
Based on falling commodity prices, the decline in use values was expected, but Ware said it took a while for the decrease to show up because use values are calculated on a rolling five-year average. That means it takes several years of farm income changes before they are reflected in use values.
“This is just what we have been saying to folks all along,” said Ware, who has served as the county’s tax assessor for the past 20 years. “The farmland values were going to start going down. It was not a question of if but when.”
How much taxes on land will actually decrease will depend on the county’s millage rate, which is set by the Board of Supervisors every fall. If the tax rate stays unchanged, most landowners will see a 4% decrease in their tax bill.
“We are hopeful it will make the farmers a little happier and they won’t complain as much,” Ware said.
The tax assessor said one break taxpayers may be missing is homestead exemption.
Homeowners can see up to $300 knocked off their property tax bill by filing for the credit. They only have to file once unless there is a change in ownership or use of the property or they have a change in marital status. Those who reach age 65 or become disabled also must refile if they wish to qualify for the more generous tax break that exempts the first $75,000 of the value of their home. Within the city limits of Greenwood, Ware said, that tax deduction currently amounts to $1,227.
Ware said many of the people who purchase a home fail to file for the homestead exemption to which they are entitled, or don’t file until years after they first qualified. The deadline for filing is April 1.
“Each year we sign up 500 for homestead exemption. It should be double that,” he said.
•Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
