The Real Property Tax Public Hearing is Wednesday April 29, 2020 at 6PM in the evening.
The Economic Development and Budget Committee (EDBC) Chair Keani Rawlins-Fernandez proposed a set of tax rates at the budget meeting today. Most of these tax rates are close to last year’s rates and similar to the rates proposed by the Mayor.
There are two rates that have changes for Maui Resident homeowners: the owner occupied rate and the rates for B&B homeowners, classified as commercial residential. For the Commercialized residential tax rate, Fernandez has proposed a reduction of about 13% from last years rate of $4.60/$1000 to $4.00/$1000. We have been asking for a reduction to $3.35/$1000 because B&B permit holders are currently forbidden from hosting visitors. For owner occupied, She has proposed a rate reduction of about 28% from last year’s rate of $2.90/$1000 to a proposed rate of $2.10/$1000.
B&B permit holders should plan to sign on to Wednesday night’s public hearing and testify that it is not equitable to continue to tax them at a premium from homeowner taxation, if they are not allowed to have guests. We should all urge the council to give us back the ability to use the permits as soon as possible. Testimony from one of your empty B&B rooms might be effective.
For Hotels, the EDBC has proposed a rate of $10.25/$1000 and this represents a reduction of 7% from last years rate of $11.00/$1000. Short term rental was the only tax category where an increase over last year's rates has been proposed. The tiered Short term rental rates have been proposed at $10.75/$1000 for the assessed value up to $800,000 (same as last year) and $11.00/$1000 for the assessed value from $800,000 to 1,500,000 and $11.40/$1000 for assessed value in excess of $1,500,000.
STRH permit holders should give testimony at Wednesday night’s public hearing to express their concern about the fairness of raising short term rental tax rates, while reducing tax rates for hotels. And allowing hotels to continue to operate yet forbidding Short term Rentals from operating.
The STRH permit holders should ask for the short term rental rate to be reduced to $8.28/$1000 for the first $800,000 of value, as this is the lowest rate that was published in the notification for the public hearing of tax rates and they could not by law set the rate any lower than this. To make up the difference in revenues, testifiers should propose increasing the Hotel tax rate and give a reason why hotels should be paying a higher tax rate than Short Term Rentals.
How to sign in to testify:
The public hearing will be run remotely through a videoconferenceing site on the blue jeans platform. You click here to sign into the meeting https://primetime.bluejeans.com/a2m/live-event/pgxygess
You can also give oral testimony via phone. To join the meeting by phone call 1-408-740-7256 (US) or 1-888-240-2560 (US toll free), then enter meeting ID 358865836 and passcode 5937.
The clerk will call out to the testifiers and you will be given three minutes for your testimony. If your connection is lost, the meeting will continue, you can just call in again, or go to the website link again and reload. If you need more information on the process you can also call the county clerk at 808-270-7748 before the public hearing.
