10 July—According to Ned Lamont’s spinners, “motor vehicle taxes are a burden on residents and a headache for municipalities.” When they’re right, they’re right. So House Bill and Governor’s Bill 5043 and portmanteau implementer bill 5066 purport to make motor vehicle taxation less onerous, more predictable, and fairer for Connecticut residents after October of next year. (At least for the ones who, unlike a number of our scofflaw neighbors, register their cars in this state like they’re supposed to.) To a certain extent, that’s true. For instance, it drops snowmobiles, ATVs, and residential trailers from municipal tax rolls. Residential trailers, among other things in the imprudently rushed election-year legislation that passed on party-line votes, remain to be defined.

But fairer is to the beholder. Rather than requiring assessors to use the notorious NADA guide for used-car values, 5066 mandates a 20-year straight-line depreciation schedule, starting with a vehicle’s MSRP: First year 80 percent, second year 75 percent, third year 70 percent, and so on, through fifteenth to nineteenth years at 10 percent of MSRP. It clinches the depreciation with “years twenty and beyond” at “not less than two thousand dollars.”

Sounds pretty good. Except that now a 20-year-old vehicle is subject to a $500 assessment limit regardless of the vehicle’s actual value. That means “not more than five hundred dollars.” As opposed to “not less than five hundred dollars.” So if you have a collectible vehicle, as of October 2023 you’re royally screwed.

And the mandatory depreciation schedule rather than NADA value isn’t necessarily as great as it may seem at first. My beloved 12-year-old creampuff, for instance, is currently assessed at what comes out to just over 20 percent of MSRP—even with currently inflated used-car values. But 5066 would mandate 25 percent of MSRP.

So the new law is great if you live in a million-dollar mobile home and your daily driver is an ATV, but really lousy and possibly punitive for the rest of us.

Connecticut should do the right thing and eliminate unfair vehicle taxation by municipalities by joining the 23 states in which municipalities don’t tax motor vehicles. Certainly it would mean raising local mill rates, but that would be minimal. And it’s the only sure way to get rid of what is undeniably a burden on residents and a headache for municipalities . . .