Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

This fall, Charlotte County citizens who own used vehicles will see some tax relief when they open their personal property tax bills.

The Charlotte County Board of Supervisors (BOS) unanimously voted to approve a temporary lower personal property tax rate following a public hearing on Monday, Oct. 4.

The county’s current personal property tax rate is $3.95 per $100 of assessed value.

The new temporary personal property tax rate is $2.60 per $100 of the assessed value of the personal property, which is $1.35 per $100 of assessed value less than the current.

The decreased tax rate would be effective for the Fiscal Year 2022, which began on July 1, 2021, and will extend to June 30, 2022.

During the September BOS meeting Commissioner of the Revenue, Naisha Carter, addressed the board, announcing that that vehicle owners could see increases in their personal property tax bills this December.

This is not due to a tax rate increase or reduction in tax relief but rather to increases in used vehicle values.

“With the COVID-19 pandemic, everything has gone up, and since March 2020, used car prices and trade-in values have gone up,” Carter said.

According to Carter, higher vehicle assessments mean citizens could face a 25% to over a 100% increase in taxes than they saw in 2020.

“This increase will range from a $40 to $50 increase to several hundred dollars in additional taxes,” Carter said. “It is not just here in Charlotte County. This is something that is being seen all across the state.”

According to Carter, her office uses the clean trade-in value established by the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) as fair market value.

In March 2020, COVID-19 altered the anticipated trends of the automobile industry. As a result, all major vehicle valuation services, not just NADA, indicated increased market values between January 2020 and January 2021.