Letters to the Editor: March 28 – April 3, 2019

Please Get Facts Straight On City of F.C. Tax Rates

Editor,

Your paper promotes the virtues of Falls Church City, which is fine, but please stop making false statements about the taxes here.

In your March 14 edition, you say on page 5 that our $1.355 tax rate is “par for the course in the region” and then compares it to higher commercial tax rates in Fairfax County. On page 6, you say that not raising the Falls Church tax rate for the next fiscal year means “no new costs for City taxpayers to bear.” Both statements are wrong.

Your comparison of the Falls Church residential property tax rate to a commercial property tax rate is meaningless. Here are the neighboring residential tax rates for the current year, all significantly below the Falls Church rate: Arlington County – $1.006; Fairfax County – $1.15; Alexandria City – $1.13; Loudoun County – $1.085. Because the high Falls Church tax rate is applied to the high property values here, two independent analyses of Virginia-wide taxes call tax payments in Falls Church the “highest in the state” and “one of the highest median property taxes in the United States.” (www.investopedia.com; www.tax-rates.org).

Further, your statement that freezing the tax rate for next year equates to no new taxes ignores your report in the same edition that assessment values will increase 3.4 percent, which means everyone will in fact pay, on average, 3.4 percent more in taxes for the upcoming year compared to the current year. People may have differing opinions on the value residents receive for their taxes, but please get the facts right.

Brian Gish

Falls Church

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