Letter: County assessor has crossed the line
To the community,
The long arm of our El Dorado County assessor is now reaching inside the walls of our vacation homes. A tax on personal furnishings? This takes our breath away.
What a “wonderful” way to discourage purchasing or upgrading our vacation property. They want purchase prices on furniture, stoves, refrigerators and supplies. Does that mean silverware, dishes, can openers, blankets, toasters? All this going back to 2003 and prior.
My reaction to this letter from our El Dorado tax assessor is: “You have got to be kidding!”
I am a retired letter carrier and my wife is a retired waitress. Maintaining our modest vacation home is a struggle with advertising (VRBO), management fees, property taxes, HOA dues, utility bills, South Lake Tahoe permit fees, South Lake Tahoe rental/TOT taxes, insurance, and repairs.
We received our notice with a deadline date of April 1 on March 29 — three days before the due date. How wonderful of them to give us a five-week “extension” to reply.
They have opened up a “can of worms” by asking for purchasing histories going back earlier than 2003. I no longer have purchase receipts going back farther than five years. Much of our home inventory are second-hand items we bring up after use in our primary home.
Are other counties around Lake Tahoe part of this new regulation? If that is not the case, this is both unfair and unethical.
Greg and Penny Ripke, South Lake Tahoe
What if we moved up here after 2003 into what was our vacation home. Do we need to calculate what furniture was here then and what was brought with the move? If I miss a end table or chair do I risk an audit, bank levy or jail time? What if I bought a light bulb in 2006 and it burns out after we became “permanent”? Do I need to calculate the percentage of the cost based on the original purchase price of the bulb minus the number of days that we lived in the home after it was no longer considered a vacation home? You try to be an honest, tax paying citizen but somewhere the line has to be drawn. Will it stop here… I doubt it.
Greg and Penny Ripke, Taxing your furniture and appliances? That’s crazy! I already paid tax on a new water heater upon purchase. How in the world are you supposed to put a dollar amount on an old couch or the blender we’ve never used. Whats next, taxing the old clothes I wear? Taxing me for having a dog and cat?
I’ll be planting my garden soon. Will there be a tax on seeds after the sales tax and the food that comes from them?
Crazy world for sure. OLS
Wah, wah, wah, you vacation home owners go cry somewhere else. You have destroyed our neighborhoods with your vacation properties, bringing strangers into our neighborhoods day after day along with traffic, noise and trash. Anything making it harder on you is fine with me.
On another note, contact this guy, he is anti tax and anti government, even though he is an elected government official.
State Congressman McClintock
ca04tmima@mail.house.gov
Is this your second home? Or one you rent out to irritating tourists who have no respect for the locals neighborhood? Either way, I agree that this is yet another attempt by government to invade and tax.
PS: Your “vacation home” when you rent it out in the way you have described is a business. There are Business Property Taxes you have to deal with. I think that’s the LEAST you can deal with when we locals have to deal with the crap that your renters bring as described by “Steven” above.
I unfortunately live next to one and there is another within 100yrds. They SUCK!!
I also live next to vacation rental homes, they have ruined our neighborhood. Noise, drunkenness, trash in the streets. It doesn’t belong in a residential neighborhood.
I think the posters here have a bit of challenge understanding the difference between “vacation home” and “rental properties”. As Gaspen says, one is a home and one is a business that the owners just choose to use occasionally.
Lisa, I don’t think the assessor differentiates. As long as you’ve got the documentation to rent it, it’s a business. And yes, taxing the furniture is absurd.
My neighborhood is about 50% full time residents. The others are 2nd homes/vacation rentals. And yeah, it mostly sucks. I wish I had real neighbors who have some skin in this game. BUT I don’t think we can complain too much. All of us who moved here KNEW this was a tourist town. Sure, there are limits to how much abuse anybody has to tolerate, but heaping insults on the people who are our bread and butter is stupid too.
It’s easy enough to find out who owns a vacation house. Do it. Then when the partiers wake you up at 4 am, call the owners. Do it often enough, maybe they’ll start screening their clients better.
This letter is about a vacation rental. Read,”management fees, advertising, TOT, permit fees”.
There are short term vacation rentals, this one, and there are long term, full time rentals.
It is easy to read in these comments that everyone is talking about short term, weekend partiers. Even families that rent a vacation home for a week are a nuisance, loud and ruin our quiet, peaceful neighborhoods we live here to enjoy. Even though I knew this was a tourist town when I moved here 35 yrs ago, tourists stayed in the motels on hwy 50, stayed in the camp grounds in the summer and were true visitors. Realtors did not push homes for sale as vacation rentals, contractors did not build monster homes specifically as rental homes. Just because this is a tourist town doesn’t mean we can’t keep our peaceful, quiet neighborhoods for permanent residences. Our neighborhoods are zoned single family, not commercial rental, motel zones. Why should we have to put up with noise at 4am and be forced to call the sheriff? That’s absurd ! And TOT fees helping the bottom line? That’s a joke. Any TOT taxes go towards the cost of the sheriff answering complaints.
Based on my experience, it is not uncommon for ANY commercial business in California to have to pay a personal property tax. Think of it like this, there is property tax on any business for the building, but since equipment used in a place of business is for commercial use, you have to pay “property tax” on that equipment as well.
However usually one just states the estimated value of the equipment, lets say for argument a small business has $5,000 in stands, kitchen equipment (yes commercial kitchen equipment like your refrigerator, and literally the kitchen sink is taxed), glass displays, anything else that is used by that business to make money. They then pay the usual 1% like everyone else on property tax, in this case, $50. No big deal, just a cost of doing business and everyone moves on with life.
However what you are describing sounds a little different, are they actually asking for receipts or just estimates to base their taxes on? Could you be making a big deal out of nothing? Remember you are not paying property tax on inventory for sale.
Can I politely point out to you that technically you should have been paying this tax for years. Assuming you’ve been renting for 10 years, and from our above example you’d owe $50 a year, you owe the county of El Dorado $500. Look positively, you’re up $500.
I would like to remind you that it does not matter that you use that home/condo yourself. You are running a commercial business. It doesn’t matter if its used equipment. It does not matter that you are retired. It does not matter if you think it discourages you from upgrading your building or equipment. It doesn’t matter what your former jobs were.
I would also point out that the government provides more services to business than they typically do to residencies, for example, have you ever had a police officer come to your place of business for a noise abatement call? That stuff isn’t free and pulls our good LEO’s away from more important work. Since you are running a commercial operation, a fire inspector should come around and make sure there aren’t any liabilities that might endanger the public in this case your customers when your building is rented. Since your business is commercial not residential, that always creates more traffic, thus more road wear paid by the county and their reimbursement by the state from gas taxes is down. What about the good clerks, do you think the people working for the county should work for you for free, or be paid by the rest of us citizens who live here full time and pay more taxes than you?
Isn’t any of that worth $50 a year to you?
Also don’t forget your insurance policy. Yep, don’t even think of reporting to the county that your equipment is worth $5,000 then insure it for $20,000. Big no no!
Wheew. Well having said all that you still don’t like it? Well here are a few options. Stop using your building for a commercial enterprise. Sell your building, take the money put it into something according to your level of risk from a stock to a CD, something you can roll the money over every now and then, take you profits and go on a vacation to wherever you want. You could always lobby to have all vacation rentals in California exempt as well, but then that would make you a special interest group, good luck with that at your next social gathering. You could continue to support the current government in power or you could support any non incumbent who promotes fiscal responsibility or smaller government, again in this state good luck with that!
Oh wait, you sir are a retired letter carrier, hmmmmm, don’t public unions usually promote / endorse / donate to representatives that typically endorse bigger tax and spend governments? Looks like you got what you paid for if you like it or not.
We got a postcard last week from the county assessors office asking us to turn in illegal, nonregistered vacation homes in our neighborhood and there were phone numbers for that as well as numbers to report noise and garbage and parking issues. First time we have ever gotten this. Our neighborhood is mostly full time locals. Only one or two vacation rentals, often unoccupied.
dog this time i am in agreement with you(though not always) can you imagine if they outlawed vacation rentals? The screams we would hear here, values would plunge and stay there, as all those home would go into forclosure. You want to sell your home move and buy another you cant your equity is gone. Need a law enforcement officer too bad the forces have been slashed as there is less money from RE taxes and TOT, instead of 3 officers on duty now there 2 on the street. The city and county would be layung off like crazy. not only them but every one that supports vacation rentals, plumbers, elect, housekeepers, i could see us loosing a third of our population because of no jobs. Your friends, neighbors may very well be right sized to the new local economy. And dont say well i dont work in tourism, doesnt matter you do work in the local economy that if it gets smaller you could be the one to go.
My sentiments exactly reloman. Do the “LOCALS” realize how much the South Lake Tahoe economy depends on the hated “vacation rentals”? I am anxious to sell my home and be rid of the many small minded people who live there year round. Although I have met and made friends with many others over the years. We are very careful about who rents our home. We furnish them with notices about respecting permanent residents in the neighborhood. Our neighbors have never had a complaint. If all vacation rentals were sold, the locals would indeed have their quiet neighborhoods. They would however be faced with much larger problems! Why don’t you locals stop your whining?
Call TRPA and check your Plan Area Statement. Some Plan Area Statements do not allow vacation rentals.
The second home owners in my neighborhood are great! I’ve exchanged phone numbers and names and we are all friends. They’re so excited to be here at there “mountain cabin”! We always get together for a visit and catch up on things.
The vacation RENTALS can be trying at times. I make a point of meeting these short term visitors to make them feel at home and welcome them to So. Shore.I ask them to feel free to ask me for any advice about where to eat, go for a hike, the best lake views, directions to get around town, and on and on.
The partyin’ and multiple cars are a problem but I say just deal with it!
Hell, I had plenty of cars in front of my place years ago. Why a few times there was some guy(me)being towed down the street behind a Datsun pick up during a heavy snow storm with a water ski rope in the middle of winter on a pair of 210 cm Kneissels with a bottle of Jack in hand hollerin’ like a crazy person. All the elderly neighbors standing outside, clapping and laughing. Ah yes, “The good old days!!!”. That was about 40 years ago. I would not suggest doing this now, but what the heck, your’e only young once. Right?
So I say let our guests have a good time, pay their taxes,shop in our stores and bring business into our little town and maybe we can make it work and some of us can actually make a living off their visit.
Remember, like it or not, we ARE a resort town. OLS
OLS is the man! Run for mayor? City Council?
Hasn’t anyone had a business before? In Nevada it is called Business Property Tax and they charge the tax on Property used for business purposes. Is a Vacation Home for Rental a business? Why should one type of business pay and another not? Oops, forgot, this is SLT where Realtors and Vacation homes rule.