The Missouri Legislature may cut this tax credit next week in a special session as part of a economic stimulus bill. This bill potentially impacts both Raytown and the larger Raytown School District because of the higher proportion of seniors in the area. You can click here to read a document that shows how many people in this area benefit from the Circuit Breaker law, broken down by State Legislative Districts. Raytown’s districts are 42, 43, 48 and 49. While Raytown only has portions of these districts, expanding the area to include the Raytown School District gives us the majority of the voters in the combined total.
Click HERE for a KMOV (channel 4 in St. Louis) story on this issue.
The proposed stimulus package has many elements, but the only portion that seems to have a definite dollar amount and recipient is a plan to build a China trade hub in St. Louis with a price tag of $360 million dollars. The Missouri Budget Project has a online paper describing this project that can be accessed by clicking HERE. The article does not seem to support the plan.
Last year, seniors lost The Homestead Preservation Credit benefit that protected them from property tax increases of over 2.5% in a non-reassessment year or 5.0% in a reassessment year. The legislature simply stopped funding the program. There was little press coverage of the termination of this benefit for seniors. Readers can do a Google search of NEWS on “homestead preservation act Missouri” or any variation of that and see how many results you get and how many mention the program’s termination. The press coverage of the new proposed economic stimulus bill has focused primarily on where the money would go, not where the money to pay for it is coming from. This easily could become another benefit that seniors and individuals with disabilities may lose before they know anything about it.
I urge readers to contact their State Representatives and tell them if they are for or against this change. If any reader has found information that seems more positive about the proposed stimulus package, I will be glad to add a link to that information. Comments are encouraged, as long as they are polite and not personal attacks.
Click Here for the synopsis of the proposed legislation.
Click Here for the complete document (356 pages of legalese).
Click Here for an article in the Columbia Missourian.
Click Here for an article in the St. Louis Business Journal that seems to support this “Missouri Compromise”
Click Here for the Google search on Missouri Compromise. The above link seems to trap you into a request for a paid subscription.
For 64133 there were 511 claims filed for redemptions of $260,969. There were 718 tax credit claims filed for a total credit redemptions of $496,695. That means 1229 low income Raytown Seniors in the top half of the city benefit from the Circuit Breaker program.
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