Land use taxation

Two desks in the Carroll County offices on Pine Street in Hillsville carry the words land use in their business, and they do different work. Land Use and Planning, at 605-1 Pine Street, takes the plats: dividing a parcel and filing a subdivision plat. The Commissioner of the Revenue, at 605-7 Pine Street, is the office this term belongs to.

The county's own description of the Commissioner's work lists the "special assessment of land under the land use program" among the changes that office keeps in the real estate files, next to property splits, transfers and new construction. Carroll's program page describes an ordinance providing special assessments for agricultural, horticultural and forest real estate, and says applications and the criteria to qualify can be picked up at the Commissioner's office. Planning reviews how a tract is divided under the county's subdivision ordinance; the assessment on the tract is the Commissioner's.

The two files do meet. Splitting lots off enrolled land, by conveyance or other action of the owner, can bring roll-back taxes on the separated piece, and which splits do and which do not is sorted in what triggers rollback taxes. The plat goes to one desk; the tax consequence is figured at the other.

A tax record or a listing that says a tract is in land use is saying two things: the tax on the enrolled acres is figured on a use value, not the market figure, and the difference between the two is a deferred tax that can come back if the land stops qualifying.

The land book for enrolled land carries both numbers, the use value and the fair market value. How the first is reached has its own entry, use value assessment. The gap between the tax on each figure is the deferred tax, and it is why the phrase matters when the land changes hands or changes use.

Under Va. Code 58.1-3237 that deferred tax comes back as roll-back taxes when the qualifying use changes to a nonqualifying use, or, except as a local subsection G ordinance provides, when the zoning is changed to a more intensive use at the request of the owner or his agent. How far back it reaches, and with what interest, is set out under that term.

A sale is not on that list by itself. Continuation in the program depends on qualifying use, paid taxes and compliance, not on the same owner holding title, and liability does not attach at a change in ownership "if the new owner does not rezone the real estate to a more intensive use" and keeps the land in its classified use. That is why selling land that is in land use turns on whether the sale splits the tract and what the buyer does next. An enrollment the buyer wants to keep is one of the steps a farm sale adds, set out under how long farms take to sell, and an owner deciding whether to hold enrolled ground another year will find that weighed in should I wait for a better market. The program from application to exit is walked through in the land use program explained.