Letter: SC tax unfair to seniors
Seniors, beware.
If you are 65 years old or older and have a primary residence in Beaufort County, you should be entitled to the Homestead Exemption. This means that $50,000 would come off of the market value of your home before calculating your taxes.
However, if you are trying to be proactive and plan for the “hereafter” by adding a son, daughter or other designated individual to your title and that individual is not 65 years old, you will only get a reduction of $25,000.
It does not matter if you are the only resident and it is your primary home and you can prove the other person on the title does not live with you, you still get penalized for estate planning.
After going through this exercise, we found several other mistakes on the tax bill. Please check all figures carefully and make sure you are getting what you deserve.
To me, this is all about fairness and, frankly, I don’t see any fairness in only giving seniors half of what they deserve.
Pat Harvey-Palmer
St. Helena Island
This story was originally published February 21, 2017 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Letter: SC tax unfair to seniors."