A Room With A View — And A Tax
Tax
New Hampshire Union Leader
Kendra Gilbert
Boston University Washington News Service
10-11-06
WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 – A view from the top – or any view, for that matter – no longer comes cheap. Not, at least, in New Hampshire.
Tom Thomson, an Orford tree farmer, brought his complaint about the Granite State’s “view assessment” on residential properties to the nation’s capital Wednesday, making it the focus of a discussion at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
In New Hampshire, Thomson said in his presentation, “it’s views, views, views.” And assessors have latched onto that, he said.
Thomson spoke to a group of roughly 20 people, from congressional aides to members of the foundation and others with interests in New Hampshire’s taxing dispute.
“We’re always very concerned about property rights,” said John Hilboldt, director of lectures and seminars at the Heritage Foundation.
Every five years, residential properties in New Hampshire come up for reassessment. The evaluations are often handled by assessment firms working under contract to individual cities, which assess a property based on four criteria: structure, land, waterfront and view.
“At least when you have waterfront [property], you own that,” Thomson’s wife, Sheila, said after the presentation.
Thomson, son of three-term New Hampshire governor Meldrim Thomson Jr., first got involved with the issue last year, when his family’s 250-acre Orford farm came up for assessment. Its view was valued at $10,000, thus increasing the annual taxes Thomson must pay on the land.
That same year, the Mount Cube farm Thomson grew up on —and where his mother still lives — had its view assessed at $100,000.
Thomson bemoaned what he said was the lack of guidelines in determining what exactly a view is and how much it is worth.
Thomson showed slides of properties in New Hampshire, all with varying views, and cited the assessments on those views. A home near a recreational sports field used by children earned the same view assessment as a home with a more picturesque mountain view.
“It’s so subjective,” Thomson said in an interview after the presentation. “You could have 10 people come up with 10 ideas of what a view is. You couple that with you’re looking at something that doesn’t belong to you and you have no control over it.”
Thomson said assessors he spoke with often used what they called the “wow” factor to determine how much a view was worth.
“If you’re going to have any kind of assessment on a view, which I don’t believe you should, it cannot be done unless you have a clear concise definition on what a view is,” Thomson said. “And we don’t have that in the state of New Hampshire.”
Many in attendance quipped about the practice of trying to quantify a constantly changing variable over which property owners have no control.
Everything from bad weather to seasonal changes in foliage was offered as evidence that a “view tax,” as Thomson calls it, is unfair.
Thomson said he was worried that the view assessment could do serious harm to New Hampshire’s economy.
“If we don’t correct this issue and deal with it, we will see the rural character of the state of New Hampshire lost,” he said. “And we will see the downward spiral of our number one industry: tourism.”
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