Last week, we went into special session to take an important step in the municipal car tax cut we passed in 2022. This next step was not new legislation, rather, it was a bill that the Planning and Development Committee worked on for two years, as a required step in the process of implementing the motor vehicle tax cut. The bill passed the House along bipartisan lines during our regular session, but when it got to the Senate, in the final hours of session, it was amended in a way that would have drastically increased commercial vehicle taxes, and we could not pass it in the House as amended. This triggered our need for a special session, which took place a little over a week ago, on June 27th.
As a result of the implementation bill that was passed on the 27th, the average car owner will see a tax decrease of around 8%, and more than that over time, because we have set a new depreciation schedule that will be used based on MSRP, not NADA. NADA Guide values are considered by many to be overinflated, since they don’t factor in the condition of the vehicle. The goal of this was to create predictability for taxpayers and towns, and I worked directly with First Selectperson Marconi from the moment the initial bill language was proposed, to ensure this was not going to create a problem in Ridgefield. Additionally, we made sure that commercial vehicles will be on the motor vehicle deck and not the personal property deck.
It's important to note that while there seemed to be considerable misunderstanding of the bill in the Senate during this special session leading to many no votes up there, in the House, not only did Republican Minority Leader Vinny Candelora vote for it but so did the ranking member of the Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee, Representative Holly Cheeseman, along with 14 additional Republican colleagues, many of them in leadership positions. |