County reduces property tax as result of sales tax growth

It sounds good in a headline, "Property tax rate to go down in Cape County," but in reality the Cape Girardeau County Commission's move to lower the property tax for the county's operations barely registers in the pocketbooks of property owners.

To be fair, the county commission is not seeking credit for lowering the rate. Commissioners are more concerned about people misunderstanding what the decrease will mean. The reduction will have very little significance for individuals. That's because a very small amount of taxes collected by the county actually goes to the county. This can be confusing for some. The county collects property taxes for a number of entities in the county. The largest property tax is collected for the school districts, which is unaffected by the commission's recent vote. So don't expect much relief in your annual property tax bill.

The commission should get credit for keeping its word. In 2012, when it enacted a county government property tax for the first time in decades, county residents barked. The commission sought to justify the tax because it's part of a formula that hadn't been calculated in a long time, as the institution of a sales tax in 1979 had negated the need for a county property tax. With eroding growth in sales tax revenue, the commission argued it needed to bring back the formula and a property tax to balance the books. The commission said that once the county's sales tax collections rebounded, the property tax would be rolled back. Indeed it was, to $0.0349 from a rate of $0.0609. A person with a house appraised at $100,000 would pay about $6.63 for county government, which is about $4.94 less than last year.

When the dust settles, the commission should be given credit for doing what it said it would do. But the commission will be the first to say that this reduction was made possible by an improved economy and more sales tax revenue, not from any kind of political shift. The savings incurred by the move is less exciting than the fact that the local economy seems to be on the upswing.