School Tax Rate Rankings — Taxpayer Viewpoint

Which property taxpayers in Dutchess County pay the highest school tax rate?  The lowest?  Where does your property stand in the school district rankings?  Here are the answers.

The first thing to understand is that the answers are different for homes (homestead properties) than they are for businesses (non-homestead properties).  That's because 5 of Dutchess County's 13 school districts — Arlington, Beacon, Poughkeepsie, Spackenkill, and Wappingers — tax their home properties at lower true value rates than their business properties.  The second thing to understand is that in the Arlington, Beacon, and Wappingers School Districts, properties are taxed at different rates depending not only upon whether they are homestead properties, but also upon which town the property lies in.  For more details on these points, see School Tax Rate Comparisons — Two Viewpoints.

School Tax Rankings for Homes

The following chart shows the 2010 true value school tax rates for homes in Dutchess County.  For the 5 school districts using the homestead tax option, the homestead tax rates are shown.  The primary data source is the Dutchess County Real Property Tax Service Agency's 2011 Tax Rate Pamphlet.  To improve clarity, I've grouped Arlington's municipal segments (Towns) with nearly the same true value tax rate into a single bar.

As the chart shows, first place for homesteads goes to the Hyde Park segment of the Arlington School District.  Homesteads in this segment pay the highest true value tax rate of any homes in Dutchess County — by far.  Arlington's Hyde Park rate of $22.02 is 15 percent higher than for second place Pawling, and almost double that of “last place” Poughkeepsie.  The reason for the exceptionally high tax rate in the Hyde Park segment of Arlington is that this segment contains a large number of farms with partial tax exemptions.  It turns out that the Hyde Park segment of Arlington contains only a few dozen homestead properties.  Thus, only a few taxpayers are affected, presumably not enough taxpayers to mount an effective complaint.

Apart from the anomalous Hyde Park segment of Arlington, with its exorbitant $22 tax rate, school tax rates for homes in Dutchess County can be seen to be split between high-rate districts (Arlington, Pawling, Hyde Park, Red Hook, Dover, and Spackenkill, in the range of about $17 to $19), and low-rate districts (Rhinebeck, Beacon, Wappingers, Webutuck, Pine Plains, Millbrook, and Poughkeepsie, in the range $11 to $14).

Although Poughkeepsie has the lowest homestead school tax rate in Dutchess County, Poughkeepsie gets a greater proportion of its funding from sources other than school taxes of any school district in Dutchess County.

School Tax Rankings for Businesses

The following chart shows the 2010 true value school tax rates for businesses in Dutchess County.  For the 5 school districts using the homestead tax option, the non-homestead tax rates are shown.  Once again, I've grouped segments with nearly the same true value tax rate into a single bar for clarity:

The chart shows first place for non-homestead tax rates going to Spackenkill by a landslide, with a bank-breaking $38.02 tax rate.  To put Spackenkill's sky-high tax rate in perspective, it is more than double Hyde Park's 4-th place rate of $18.60, and more than triple Webutuck's $11.92.  The primary business properties in the Spackenkill school district have historically belonged to IBM Corp., which has been willing in the past to pay exorbitant school taxes into a district where many of its professional employees lived.

Way “behind” Spackenkill, but still easily capturing second place is Arlington, in the $23.50 to $27 range, depending upon segment.  Trailing considerably after Arlington is a large pack of school districts in the $16.50 to $19 range.  The remaining five school districts — Millbrook, Pine Plains, Webutuck, Poughkeepsie, and Rhinebeck — managed to keep their commercial school tax rates at the low end, between $11 and $14.  Of these five, all except Poughkeepsie have the same tax rate for homes and businesses.

How should these rankings be interpreted?

The rankings in this post compare how steeply homes and businesses are taxed by school districts in Dutchess County.  The first chart can be used to determine the relative school tax bills for homes in Dutchess County in 2010.  For example, if you own a home in the Hyde Park segment of the Arlington School District, your 2010 school tax bill was almost double that of a home with the same taxable market value in the City of Poughkeepsie.  Similarly, the second chart shows that if you own a commercial property in the Spackenkill School District, your 2010 school tax bill was more than triple that of a commercial property with the same taxable market value in the Webutuck, Pine Plains, or Millbrook School Districts.

In summary, these charts show how steeply school districts tax their properties — from the taxpayer's point of view.  These charts are not appropriate for comparing how steeply the various school districts tax their tax base on average, because many school districts tax different properties at different rates.  For this latter comparison, see School Tax Rate Rankings — School District Viewpoint.

Out of County School Districts

A small number of Dutchess County property owners do not pay school taxes to any of the Dutchess County school districts listed above.  Instead, they pay to so-called “out-of-county” school districts Carmel, Haldane, or Taconic Hills.  The 2010 true value tax rate for the Taconic Hills School District is only $10.07, making it the lowest school tax rate for Dutchess County home or business property taxpayers.  At the other extreme, the 2010 true value tax rate for the Carmel School District is $20.34, placing it second only to the Hyde Park segment of Arlington for homes, and third only to Spackenkill and Arlington for businesses.  Finally, the Haldane School District's $14.75 tax rate places it between the low-rate and high-rate districts for both homes and businesses.