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Albany council weighs real property transfer tax and business-license study as possible revenue sources
Summary
City staff outlined options for a real property transfer tax and a business-license tax study on Dec. 15; staff recommended choices on tiering and indexing while urging council direction on revenue targets. A local real-estate industry group urged caution, calling transfer taxes volatile and harmful to housing mobility.
City of Albany officials on Dec. 15 discussed a possible real property transfer tax (RPTT) and a concurrent study of business-license taxes as ways to raise general-fund revenue.
Rainer Schwartz, the city’s finance director, told the council staff had modeled multiple approaches — from a simple tiered rate structure to a quartile-indexed system — and recommended the council give direction on a revenue target, the number and breakpoints of tiers, and whether to index rates to a rolling-sales measure rather than the consumer price index.
"If we can start to hone in on that target, the number of tiers and how we want to define the tiers and also confirm indexing, we can look at different means of indexing," Schwartz…
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