Back in 2011, during Lee Anderson’s last year in the Georgia House before his doomed attempt at the US House, your arrowflinging writer called and wrote him about the activities of the Tax Reform Council. Lee acted ignorant of the issues and directed me to his guy on the Council, plant nurseryman Skeeter McCorkle. He got back, “Lee, I know what McCorkle will do – he will get a whole new slew of agriculture exemptions!”
Anderson wasn’t in the Georgia House in 2012 when House Bill 386 passed, containing all those costly new exemptions that real people are now having to make up.
Included in the bill was a provision giving nearly every farmer in Georgia, even home gardeners, what is now known at the GATE (Georgia Agricultural Tax Exemption) card. It looks like this:
Now when we used to visit Lee Anderson’s farm, each and every gate we passed through had to be closed and secured with a chain. So it used to be with Georgia Tax Exemptions.
What transpired was a comical statewide tax looting publicized heavily in the Atlanta Media, municipal publications, and even county papers like the Lincoln Journal. Some farming fellows tried to use their GATE card on the casket and vault for their father’s funeral. Others bought $100,000’s of lumber for home building. The carnage continues today at nearly every rural store in Georgia.
The tax losses exceeded 15% in many counties, causing property tax increases just like the 22% property tax Augustans got out of the same tax reform fiasco.
A Georgia Municipal Association map and chart depicted the damage statewide.
Another term, this time with Lee in the Senate, will be a real riot if the escaped money cows don’t come home.
Cow patties won’t fund education!