(The Center Square) — A Louisiana legislative committee met on Tuesday to discuss the disbursement from more than $88 million in movable, assessed property tax value that presently goes to East Baton Rouge Parish.
That assessment provided more than $10 million for the parish, but other parts of the state are seeking a piece of the revenue pie.
Louisiana has a property tax assessed by each parish and split into two classes. The first is real property, often called immovable, which refers to both residential and commercial land and buildings. The second is personal, or movable, which is machinery, fixtures and furnishings. Personal can include barges, railroad cars and even pipelines.
This does not include public service properties centrally assessed by Tax Commission staff which include telecommunications and electric utilities among others.
At present, East Baton Rouge Parish receives the levy from transportable inventory belonging to companies without a physical presence in the state.
Michael Matherne, administrator for the Louisiana Tax Commission, says the taxable value of movable assets amount to $88,692,260, based on tax year 2022. The commission counted 327 properties that contribute to that number, most of which are private railcar lines and boat and barge companies.
Tax recipient bodies in East Baton Rouge Parish receive those tax dollars at a 114.5 millage rate, which is how the property tax is assessed based on the taxable value. This means the parish received more than $10 million of that $88 million evaluation in movable property taxes.
“It’s as big as Dallas, in statute,” Matherne said of the East Baton Rouge movable tax revenue.
Legislators felt they should decide on a better way to evenly allocate this tax revenue since railcars and barges go through many different parishes. Matherne said he is “yet to find” another state who allocates the entire fund to one parish.
The difficult part is deciding how to properly divide the revenue.
“It can get pretty convoluted pretty quickly on how long these cars stay in a location or spend time as they move across the state,” Rep. Les Farnum, R-Calcasieu, said.
Matherne believes solving this issue could just be a matter of collecting records from the companies.
“Certainly if I own a car line, I’m gonna track it,” Matherne said. “I can guarantee you these car lines know where they’re going.”
Sen. Beth Mizell, R-St. Tammany, added that even if a train is only in a parish for a short amount of time, if an emergency were to happen it would be up to local sheriffs and ambulances to solve it.
There are many different examples of splitting the tax, the most popular being counting the mileage of tracks and portioning it accordingly.
The committee will decide on a solution after looking at the numbers presented to them by the tax commission, but leaders of the commission felt the legislators have one other big thing to consider.
“When the commission wraps up and makes recommendations, I would like you to reflect if this problem is best done in statute, or by promulgating rules with the task commission,” Matherne said.
