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During Charlotte City Manager Marcus Jones’ budget presentation last month, he presented a slide that showed how little the typical Charlotte household pays in property taxes and fees compared with other North Carolina cities.
Here is the chart:
As you can see, the chart shows the “typical household” in Charlotte pays roughly $4,500 in taxes and fees per year.
Meanwhile, the “typical household” in Fayetteville is getting crushed, according to the city of Charlotte, paying nearly $7,000 in taxes and fees. That’s 55% more.
High Point residents are also getting a raw deal, according to the chart, paying 50% more.
Judging by this chart, Charlotteans have it really, really good!
On first glance, Inside Politics thought the chart seemed too good to be true. And with a little digging, it is.
To create the slide, Charlotte city officials first researched all the fees a typical household pays, such as their water bills, their garbage fees and how much they pay in local sales taxes.
When you total it up, those fees are more or less the same for each city.
But the city’s analysis went off the rails when it estimated how much in property taxes a “typical household” pays in each city.
City officials started their analysis by using the median taxable value of a home in Charlotte: $358,600.
From there, they calculated how much that homeowner paid in city and county taxes. In that homeowner’s case, it was $2,715.
So far, so good.
But city officials used that same median home price of $358,600 for all of the other cities in their analysis. The problem: The Charlotte housing market is more expensive than most places in the state.
On one level, it makes sense: The same house would pay different amounts in different cities. But Charlotte staff didn’t present it as the same house compared city to city — they presented it as comparing the typical household city to city.
If you are calculating the taxes of a “typical household” in High Point, that family isn’t living in a home with a taxable value of $358,600. The tax assessor there says the median taxable value in the city is $160,700 — less than half of what Charlotte said it was.
The city’s analysis says a typical household in High Point pays $4,492 in city and county taxes. But in reality, the typical household’s bill would be approximately $2,200. Their total bill for government services would be slightly less than the typical homeowner in Charlotte — not 50% more.
The same holds true in Fayetteville, where the median tax value of a home is $219,000. That means the typical household there pays $3,019 in city and county property taxes — not $4,943, as Charlotte claims. That household still pays more than the typical Charlottean — but it’s $400 more in taxes and fees than the typical household in Charlotte, not $2,600 more.
That brings up another point: Using the correct median home values for other cities wouldn’t show that Charlotte has the largest tax/fee burden instead of the least. In fact, Charlotte would still fare well, with a smaller bill for government services for the typical homeowner than many North Carolina cities.
One reason is the city has a large commercial and office sector, worth billions of dollars, which offsets some of the burden on homeowners. (Though online retail and work-from-home are depressing the taxable value of offices and shopping centers. That will push a greater share of the tax burden onto residential property.)
Another reason is growth: Budgets can benefit when people move into a city. The big problems come when population growth is stagnant and fixed costs rise.
An accurate chart would have shown that Charlotteans don’t have a particularly high tax/fee burden compared to other North Carolina cities, but that cities are mostly bunched together. Typical households pay roughly the same amount.
But the local tax burden is going up. Mecklenburg County will likely have a small property tax increase this year. And Charlotte wants to increase the countywide sales tax by 1 cent for a transportation plan, which would make it the highest in the state.
The city has a history of presenting misleading information or omitting key information.
There was a presentation on transit priorities that omitted the fact that people wanted to spend on roads. There were ridership projections for the Silver Line that were incorrect, leading one former transit leader to also say it was “really suspect.”
There was the city’s distorted summary of public feedback on spending tax dollars on renovations on Bank of America Stadium.
In response to this article, the city of Charlotte issued a statement saying it's "aware that the same home can be valued differently in different cities based on the dynamics of local real estate markets."
It added that: "The median value in Charlotte reflects the typical Charlottean’s buying power, including if they were to move to one of these other cities, which means it is a point of comparison for the typical homeowner in Charlotte."
