One more attempt to underline the effects of the Hancock

Maybe my last posting went on way too long. But in a nutshell, here's the way to think about the Hancock Amendment and how it affects your taxes and the revenues of taxing authorities:

• about half of all property-tax payers will wind up paying more than they did last year; furthermore, their increase will probably be greater than the rate of inflation. These are the people whose homes go up in value more than the average increase for the district.
• about half of all property-tax payers will either wind up paying less than they did last year, or will pay a slight increase in taxes that will be at the rate of inflation or lower. These are the people whose homes do in fact go up in value, but go up in value less than the average increase for the district (or, of course, those whose home-values remain unchanged or decline).
• no taxing entity that rolls back according to the Hancock Amendment will realize any revenue increase greater than the rate of inflation.

I hate to complicate things, now that I've reduced it all down to three bullet points; however, for the sake of accuracy, I have to point out that this is true for each taxing entity, and not necessarily true of your whole tax bill. I pay property tax to 14 taxing authorities; the three bulleted items above are entirely accurate about the taxes I pay to each of those taxing authorities when they roll back in accordance with the Hancock Amendment. However, if a taxing authority like a city, library, school district, etc., passes a new operating tax levy, there will not necessarily be a rollback for that taxing authority. Thus 12 of the 14 taxing authorities to which I pay taxes might roll back as detailed in the Hancock Amendment; if the other two don't because they've passed a new levy, then the whole of my tax bill (the sum of the tax I pay to all 14) might not be accurately described by the above three bullet points.