Word: assessors
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...denial came in response to Harvard Tenant Union claims this week that although the Cambridge Assessor's Office granted Harvard Real Estate lower assessments, the company increased rent on the grounds that property taxes had increased...
...seems there is an obligation to lower rents or prevent future increases when an abatement is given, but in fairness to the landlords, utility costs have gone through the roof." Kevin T. McDevitt, principle assessor for the city of Cambridge, said yesterday. "Taxes landlords must pay have also gone up a great deal, despite the abatements," he added...
From there, Kuttner's narrative takes off in two directions, the lesser known stories of how taxes got out of hand and who benefitted from them. The huge increases in property taxes were actually the result of "reform" of the taxes in 1965. A San Fransisco tax assessor--the man who sets the values at which the homes and businesses are taxed--was found to have been getting kickbacks from certain businesses in return for low assesments, and consequently low taxes. It turns out, however, that the assessor, Russ Wolden, had actually been keeping homeowners' assessments artificially low, and making...
...real outrage came with the wild inflation in the housing market in the late '70s, The property tax, as Kuttner explains clearly, is the product of the tax assessor's judgement of how much the house is worth times the tax rate. When the assessors began to raise their estimates on home values in line with inflation, the taxes people actually paid went haywire even though the government had not raised the rates. Because of the reforms that took power away from the assessors, "as housing prices doubled and then doubled again, the local assessor could only feed the inflating...
Rudolph R. Russo, Cambridge tax assessor, said yesterday Harvard is not increasing its payments in lieu of taxes because of recent University purchases of land in the city...