Few people know about Conservation Use Valuation, a Georgia tax
program begun in 1992. For the ones who do, though, it has saved
them considerable money in ad valorem taxes.
CUV tax savings for qualified farm and forest landowners has
amounted to $212 million over the eight-year period, said Coleman
Dangerfield of the University of Georgia Center for Forest
Business.
The tax savings in 1999 alone were an estimated $43.7 million.
That’s a lot of money, but it represents only 0.84 percent of the
$5.2 billion collected annually in property taxes in the
state.
Environmental Impacts
Dangerfield, an Extension Service economist and professor in
UGA’s Warnell School of Forest Resources, said CUV was a response
to concerns for urban sprawl, land use transition and resulting
environmental impacts.
“It provides tax relief for broad classes of qualified
agriculture and forest landowners,” he said.
Under the program, a landowner signs a 10-year agreement with the
county to receive current-use, as opposed to fair-market
valuation of the property for tax purposes. The landowner gets a
lower tax bill, and the rest of the state gets more green and
open space in farms and forests.
Details in New Publication
Details of the CUV program are now in a new publication from the
Center for Forest Business. “
Property Tax Incentives for the Georgia Landowner” is under
CFB research notes on the Warnell School’s CFB Web
page.
The publication can be viewed as electronic slides on-line, with
speaker notes. Or you can download it to print or to view on
portable computers.
The bulletin covers the ad valorem tax issues of CUV for
agricultural, forest and environmentally sensitive land and for
residential transitional property.
It provides details, too, on the one-time county ad valorem tax
on timber at harvest or at sale for harvest. And it covers issues
of property tax digests, assessed values, millage rates and fair
market value (FMV) for property.
The CFB publication also covers Agricultural Preferential
Assessment for farm and forest land, a program similar to CUV.
