To make this switch, people's 2006 household income (used to determine income sensitivity eligibility) will be used to calculate their eligibility to two full years. This means that people who had a one-time spike in their household income will potentially lose eligibility for property tax relief the following year.
Incomprehensibly shortsighted and stupid as that part of the system is, it pales in comparison to what so many in the state have now discovered is a glaringly horrific violation of people's private financial data, now made public by this system of 'crediting' towns for the amount which people used to receive in a prebate check. This system of course, makes public all tax bills and all 'credits' applied to those tax bills.
To argue as Rep. Maxine Grad, also representing Moretown, Roxbury and Northfield, does, that allowing people to apply all or part of their income tax refund to their property tax bills, provides a measure of privacy is absurd on its face and, laughable in practice. Grad and other supporters call this option a safeguard on private financial data.
According to the Vermont Department of Taxation, 708 Vermonters applied their income tax refunds to their property tax bills. Statewide 108,723 received 'adjustments' to their bills (formerly prebates).
Those 'safeguards' of which Grad writes were utilized by less than one percent of the recipients - 0.065 percent to be precise. That is no safeguard and its plain old head-in-the-sand denial to suggest that private financial data is safeguarded by this system. Those who would data mine and credit formulas to extrapolate household income based on local tax rates, tax bills and 'adjustments,' are just as capable as this writer, of finding out from the state that only a minute fraction of recipients applied any tax refunds to their property tax bills.
It's insulting beyond measure that our elected representatives think this is enough to protect something as private as household income. Are they ready to publish their household income for the rest of the state (not to mention data miners and telemarketers) to see?
Those 'safeguards' don't cut it.
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