This means that the property tax bill of John Q. Public, who lives in
any Valley town and receives help from the state for his property taxes,
will show his full bill of $8,000 per year, then the state's
contribution of $5,200 and the amount he must pay the town of $2,800.
Given that income sensitivity is based completely on household income,
it takes only rudimentary algebra skills to do the backwards
calculations to determine what John Q. Public's - or anyone's -
household income is.
This privacy violation was the subject of a lawsuit in Manchester where
the town had been keeping state contributions to property tax bills
private in order to prevent just that type of backwards calculating to
determine household incomes for any and all taxpayers. The Vermont state
report HS-122 details property tax adjustment information for Vermont
households (by town) where owners earn less than $97,000 (the cutoff for
receiving property tax aid from the state).
During the trial Manchester's town treasurer submitted a spreadsheet he
created using the HS-122 report that calculated the income of nine
households to within $15 of the figures stated on state tax returns.
Despite that violation of people's right to the confidentiality of their
private financial information, Bennington Superior Court Judge John
Wesley ruled last week that the town of Manchester must make the
information public.
Wesley ruled that the Legislature had the chance to declare the "state
contribution" portion of the property tax bill private and declined to
do so.
The Legislature acts at the behest of its employers - the citizenry of
Vermont - and perhaps legislators need to hear from constituents that
this type of privacy violation is not okay and needs to be corrected.
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