Airline Fees Make More Sense than Property Tax Appeal Fees
Topic: A Tax to Grind, Property Tax Appeals
Friday, 26 August 2011 by David H. LeVan
Loading ...How many travelers are excited about the new airline fees? In order to boost profits airlines have started charging for everything – changing flights, better seats, earlier boarding, food, entertainment…. even pillows and blankets. According to the Bureau of Transportation, the top 26 airlines combined made $3.84 billion in 2010 profits with $2.1 billion of it coming from fees. Over half of their profits in 2010 came from fees! Almost $1 billion came from baggage fees alone! Do you miss the old days when bags flew free on all airlines?
It appears that the Court of Tax Appeals (COTA) in Kansas is taking a page out of the airlines fee manual. In the interest of covering about $1 million of their budget, COTA recently proposed significant increases in filing fees, some of the increases being as high as 1000%. Fortunately the fees were cut so that they are now ONLY doubled. Are taxpayers supposed to feel good about only having the fees doubled?
Is it even appropriate to be charged to appeal your property value? Should a taxpayer really have to pay to correct an erroneous assessment? All the property tax appeal fees gets you is back to where you should have been to begin with. At least with airline baggage fees your bag gets to travel to the same destination as you…. well, most of the time anyway.
Tell us about your experiences with fee increases for filing property tax appeals at taxtogrind.com.