Even more on commercial property tax assessment policies

Tony wrote to me to say that he had written a letter to the editor of the Post that was similar to mine ("Tax Policy Hurts D.C.'s Local Businesses," in response to the Post article "Feeling the Pinch of D.C.'s Prosperity: Small Businesses Cry Out for Relief From Rapid Rise in Property Taxes) but it didn't run.

He then recounted an email thread with a City official, alluding to the Evans legislation on tax relief that I mentioned obliquely in my own letter.

He wrote back to the very high level DC Government official, stating:

I have searched in vain to find the tax relief legislation for small business of which you speak. I found one bill proposed by Jim Graham in February. I cannot find any record of a vote on it. And the bill is pretty meager. It would be limited to businesses 20 years or older, which would rule anything that was youth oriented....

Frankly, I don't understanding why legislation is necessary. All you need is a reasonable appraisal process based on the revenue of small businesses, not based on some commercial real estate idea of value. This should be an administrative process based on policy, not a legislative issue.

Word.

And speaking of my point that the participants in the downtown real estate market (+ Georgetown and Friendship Heights and increasingly in other markets like NoMa, around the baseball stadium, north of Dupont Circle, and in Columbia Heights) are national and international, Bovis Lend Lease, active in DC, is doing a $3 billion project in London, while Morgan Stanley is buying a German hotel chain... These are everyday deals, but deals that influence the value of property downtown, which in turn influences the property tax assessments for commercial property across the rest of the city.