ATLANTA — Some Georgia homeowners could soon get some property tax relief, but it would come with a price, a price some critics say it too much to pay.
Channel 2’s Richard Elliot says Republican lawmakers are pushing a plan let counties slash property taxes but raise a one-cent sales tax to pay for it.
None of that will happen unless they can convince enough Democrats to come on board.
Kaycee Ike and his new wife Brianna are Gwinnett County homeowners. He agrees, property taxes are going up and up.
“And we’re right on the edge of Gwinnett, so we can also see the ones in DeKalb, and then we can see the one in Gwinnett so we definitely see them going up,” Ike said.
Gwinnett joined Cherokee and Forsyth in asking lawmakers to pass a bill allowing their voters to approve slashing property taxes in return for a one-cent sales tax.
But the plan is not for everyone.
Thirty-two other Georgia counties — including parts of Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton — are maxed out on sales tax so they aren’t eligible.
Bonaire Republican Shaw Blackmon is one of the architects of the plan. He says so far more than 100 counties are asking for it.
“Well, you’ve got over 100 counties in the cities within those counties that can fully eliminate their city-county property tax with one penny of sales tax. So i think that’s exciting for a lot of voters,” he said.
Powder Springs Democrat David Wilkerson says adding a one-cent sales tax, even if essentially giving that money back to homeowners, is still a tax on everyone, especially non-homeowners.
“So now, if you add a penny sales tax in that county, what you would see is that seniors, every time they go to the store to buy cough medicine, they would pay a tax,” he said. “When they buy food, they would pay a tax.
As a homeowner and potential homeowner, Kaycee Ike is torn. He sees both good and bad in the plan.
“For me, I would definitely enjoy it. But for someone else who’s renting, it’s going to suffer, though, but that’s kind of the trade off in the world we kind of live in,” Ike said.
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