Charlotte's Tax Comparison Chart Overstated Other Cities' Bills, Analysis Finds

A chart shown during Charlotte City Manager Marcus Jones' budget presentation made the city look like a bargain for homeowners. A news analysis from WFAE's Inside Politics newsletter found that its central comparison rested on a flawed method.

The slide compared what a "typical household" pays in property taxes and fees across North Carolina cities. It put Charlotte at roughly $4,500 a year. Fayetteville came in at nearly $7,000, or 55% more, and High Point residents were shown paying 50% more than Charlotteans.

City staff built the figures in two parts. They first tallied the fees a typical household pays, including water bills, garbage fees and local sales taxes. Those costs are about the same from city to city. The second part, the property tax estimate, is where the analysis went wrong.

Staff started with Charlotte's median taxable home value of $358,600. A homeowner at that value pays $2,715 in combined city and county taxes. That calculation holds up. The problem is that staff then applied the same $358,600 value to every other city in the comparison, even though Charlotte's housing market is more expensive than most in the state.

In High Point, the tax assessor puts the median taxable home value at $160,700, less than half of Charlotte's figure. The city's chart said a typical High Point household pays $4,492 in city and county taxes. The analysis estimated the real bill at about $2,200, which would leave the household's total cost for government services slightly below that of a typical Charlotte homeowner, not 50% higher.

Fayetteville's median taxable home value is $219,000, which means the typical household pays $3,019 in city and county property taxes, not the $4,943 shown on the chart. That household still pays more than its Charlotte counterpart, but by about $400 in taxes and fees rather than the $2,600 the slide implied.

Correcting the numbers would not make Charlotte the most heavily taxed city, according to the analysis. The city would still compare well, with a smaller bill for the typical homeowner than many other North Carolina cities. A large commercial and office sector worth billions of dollars helps offset the burden on homeowners. However, online retail and remote work are lowering the taxable value of offices and shopping centers, which will shift more of the load onto residential property. Growth also helps budgets, while trouble tends to come when population is flat and fixed costs climb.

An accurate chart, the analysis said, would have shown Charlotte's burden is not unusually high and that cities cluster closely together, with typical households paying roughly the same amount. The local tax burden is nonetheless rising. Mecklenburg County will likely have a small property tax increase this year, and Charlotte wants to raise the countywide sales tax by 1 cent to fund a transportation plan, which would give the county the highest sales tax in the state.

The analysis also pointed to earlier city presentations that drew criticism. A transit priorities presentation left out that people wanted money spent on roads. Ridership projections for the Silver Line were incorrect, and one former transit leader called them "really suspect." The city also gave a distorted summary of public feedback on spending tax dollars to renovate Bank of America Stadium.

In a statement responding to the article, the city said it is "aware that the same home can be valued differently in different cities based on the dynamics of local real estate markets." It added that Charlotte's median value "reflects the typical Charlottean's buying power, including if they were to move to one of these other cities," making it "a point of comparison for the typical homeowner in Charlotte."