Interim budgets may provide breathing room for local governments wary of setting their 2020-2021 property tax before they know the full extent of how the COVID-19 pandemic will affect the state and local economies. But interim budgets are not without … Read more

Local tax officials from across the state continue raise important questions about the pandemic.  I don’t have perfect answers to all of those questions, but I’ll do my best to respond to many of them in today’s post.  Please also … Read more

[Updated May 2020 to reflect the impact of the COVID-19 relief bill, S.L. 2020-3.] Tax administration is obviously not at the top of any local government’s list of pandemic concerns.   But social distancing and other remedial measures made necessary by … Read more

Anyone who has seen the Reese Witherspoon/Matthew Broderick classic high school satire Election knows that it is never a good idea for administrators to mess with student politics.  The recent mini-scandal out of Greenville suggests that at least a few … Read more

Consider this scenario: Carolina County conducts a reappraisal in 2018 in which Tommy TarHeel’s house is appraised at $300,000.  Tommy pays his 2018 and 2019 tax bills at that appraisal value without complaint. But in 2020 Tommy learns that back … Read more

What is the impact of a property tax appellate decision on tax years following the one under appeal?  That’s the dispute at issue in a recent N.C. Court of Appeals decision that required Graham County to return $45,000 in post-appeal … Read more

I don’t write or teach much about sales taxes, because my colleagues and I here at the School of Government focus on local government issues.  Sales taxes are, for the most part, a state government issue.  The state of North … Read more

This past July the North Carolina Court of Appeals issued an opinion that has provoked a wide variety of responses from local government attorneys.  Some fear that the opinion might require local governments across the state to completely revamp how … Read more

Downtown Durham is hot.  Millions of square feet of new and renovated residential and commercial properties hit the market this year, including luxury condos atop the city’s new tallest building. By mid-2020, the number of downtown apartments will have more than … Read more

Pardon the pun, but I couldn’t resist that title for a blog post on the subject of property tax interest.  Usually when we think of interest we think of the additional amount owed by taxpayers who fail to pay their … Read more