RACINE — Eliminating the personal property tax businesses pay to local governments would further limit services and put a greater burden on homeowners, a group of Wisconsin mayors said Friday.
The mayors — all members of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities’ Urban Alliance — made the comments during a press conference at the Racine Art Museum, 441 Main St. A state legislative committee released a report Friday showing many of its members favor getting rid of the tax.
Mayor John Dickert said eliminating the tax, which all businesses pay for property inside buildings, would just further hamstring cites like Racine that are facing huge budget deficits and are already limited by tax caps.
“We are still trying to get out heads above our water,” Dickert said. “It’s not a good idea right now.”
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In 2014 the City of Racine collected $2,964,000 in personal property tax revenue.
Mayor Tim Hanna of Appleton said that while he “wasn’t a big fan” personal property tax, it shouldn’t really be eliminated without finding a way to replace the revenue that would be lost with some kind of offset.
This summer, the Legislative Council Steering Committee for Personal Property Tax held a symposia series aimed at developing recommendations regarding the tax, among them whether the tax should be changed or eliminated.
Although efforts to pass a state law eliminating the tax have failed in recent years and there is no word of any new legislation proposing repeal, a report released Friday by the steering committee shows the bulk of committee members, most of them Republicans, favor eliminating or phasing out the tax.
“The personal property tax fails on all accounts,” wrote the Steering Committee chairman, state Rep. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, in his letter to the committee, which was part of the report, calling it burdensome and damaging to economic development.
In a memo sent to the Steering Committee by League of Wisconsin Municipalities Assistant Director Curt Witynski, he stated that while the League realized the tax was burdensome, it has significant concerns about repealing it, noting that an elimination of the tax would result in “even more of the property-tax burden shifting to residential homeowners.” Witynski noted that the LFB estimated that shift could result in residential property taxes increasing by 2 percentage points statewide.
The mayors had gathered at the museum for a meeting of the alliance during which they were to hear Jeremiah Boyle, managing director of economic development for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, speak about a report FRBC researchers had published regarding 10 Midwestern cities as part of its Industrial Cities Initiative.
The 2015-2016 legislative session begins in January in Madison.
