Mayor Mike Duggan is slated to announce his plan to alleviate Detroit homeowners’ property-tax burdens today at the Mackinac Policy Conference.
Duggan stated in an interview that, in his soon-to-be revealed Land Value Tax Plan, he wants to cut homeowners’ taxes by 30 percent. That means that, in dollars and cents, they could see a $250 annual reduction. He also said that active business owners and landowners with land “in productive use will also see their tax bills go down, depending on the taxable value of their assets.”
“For decades, we’ve been disincentivizing productive land use and incentivizing blight and speculation,” he said in the interview. “That’s why we have so many parking lots and junk yards. This changes that.”
To offset the cut, Duggan said that the taxes on blighted property and vacant lots—except for homeowners who owns three or fewer ones next to their homes or business owners who own parking lots expressly for their customers—will go up significantly.
