Last week, Free Speech displayed a note from a reader about the school property tax exemption granted to Fayette homeowners above the age of 65. This person alluded to the law’s requirement that an elder homeowner have an annual income of less than $15,000 to qualify for a full exemption, and he found that “such gracious benevolence” toward people trying to survive on $288 a week was “nauseating.”

A basic problem here is that far too many people fail to understand our legal system, including our tax system, because no one has ever explained it to them. So let me start by explaining how this school property tax exemption works for Fayette County citizens.

The law that provides this exemption is known as a local law, meaning it is a state law which applies only in Fayette County. The text of this law can be found at page 3992 of a book titled “1985 Georgia Laws,” to be found in law libraries.

The exact words of the law are very important here. The 100 percent tax exemption is given to elder citizens whose “Georgia taxable income” is less than $15,000. All three of these words are important. You cannot omit the words “Georgia” and “taxable” when you think of this law. It would be an act of incompetence for a tax professional to do that.

So what is Georgia taxable income? It’s the amount reported on your annual Georgia income tax return at line 15.

By the time you reach line 15, you have already deducted your Social Security income, your retirement income exclusion (which could be as much as $30,000), your standard or itemized deductions, and your personal exemptions.

Thus it is possible for a married couple receiving over $80,000 of annual income to come up with a Georgia taxable income of less than $15,000 and thus qualify for the full school tax exemption.

So we’re not talking about people trying to survive on $288 a week anymore.

Elderly homeowners with a Georgia taxable income of $15,000 or more still qualify for a 50 percent school tax exemption.

I might point out that this tax break is likely to have been adopted so that our older citizens with limited incomes would not find themselves having to vote against school bond issues.

Our Free Speech writer is not the only one who has been confused with this law. I recently found that a good elderly friend of mine has been paying the 50 percent tax for six years when he should have paid no school tax at all, because the people at the county tax commissioner’s office had not clearly explained the law to him, and in fact gave him a form with just the word “income” on it instead of the proper and correct “Georgia taxable income.”

When the Peachtree City citizens recently voted for a small city tax exemption for their elderly homeowners, nobody seems to have properly explained what the word “income” meant in the proposition they were voting for. In this law “income” is defined as the federal adjusted gross income (as found at line 36 in a 2004 IRS form 1040).

There is no tax without a law that imposes it. But the notion that everyone is presumed to know the law is obviously senseless.

So if our school system made more of an effort to teach a little law to our students, if our public officials made more of an effort to explain it better, and if our legislators better understood what they are doing, our citizens would be a lot less frustrated or nauseated.

That’s why, for instance, I have always advocated that people elect to public office citizens who have demonstrated they value education by being well educated themselves, and the kind who are willing to help their fellow citizens.

Claude Y. Paquin
Fayette County, Ga.

login to post comments