ST. LOUIS, Missouri — It's the holiday season, and in Missouri, that means the government is sending you a tax bill on your personal property.
Those bills are due on New Year's Eve. Many viewers have reached out with questions or complaints about the tax bills on their used cars.
One of the biggest questions we're seeing is: "Do I still have to pay personal property taxes if my car was stolen?"
The answer is yes. If you declared your vehicle as part of your personal property on Jan. 1, state law says you owe your local government a tax as if you owned it the full year.
According to the most recent crime stats published by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, people have reported 5,573 stolen cars within city limits this year alone.
However, Missouri's unforgiving tax code offers no reprieve for victims of motor vehicle theft; nor is there any immediate consideration for totaled vehicles destroyed in accidents. Whatever property you declared as your possession on Jan. 1 dictates the value of the tax you owe at the end of that same year.
"Yeah, I don't have anything to do with public safety. And I don't think the tax laws consider public safety and every individual county when they're drafted," St. Louis Assessor Michael Dauphin said. "But that's the reality of the parameters in which we're working. And we're here to follow the law."
Another question we're seeing a lot of: "If used cars depreciate in value, why is my personal property tax going up?"
The assessor told us that's because the snarled supply chain that starved car makers of computer chips and drove used car values higher. While those economic pressures are subsiding as of late, they have continued to put upward pressure on many personal property taxes, simply because the market value for used cars remains higher than you might expect otherwise.
"We have no discretion in what these values are," Dauphin said. "The way these values are determined, as we're required by Missouri statute to use, the NADA: The National Auto Dealers Association Valuation Guide. We simply take your VIN number, we input it into the system and it shoots out a value. So the city has zero influence on what those values are."
The public pain of the personal property tax notices created conditions ripe for a populist politician to appeal to voters.
"When I'm the governor of this state, folks in this state will have paid their last personal property tax bill," State Sen. Bill Eigel (R-Weldon Spring) pledged.
He's made axing the personal property tax a part of his primary campaign for governor, and used fiery rhetoric to compare the tax to "paying rent to the government for the crime of owning a car."
Eigel has sponsored or backed a number of proposals to slash, reduce, or outright abolish the personal property tax Missouri law requires on used cars, vehicles, and other large machines. But that money goes to local governments, which use it to fund things like police, fire and emergency response. To date, Eigel has not specified or explained how he'd replenish the coffers of local governments after cutting off one of their primary funding streams.
One of his Republican rivals, Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe, "will never recklessly defund the police who keep our communities safe like some candidates are suggesting," his campaign said in a statement.
"Lt. Governor Kehoe is a law and order, tax-cutting conservative who has helped enact billions of dollars in tax cuts for Missourians," his campaign spokesman said. "He will support a plan that eliminates the personal property tax while protecting funding for first responders because his highest priority is keeping Missourians safe and our future secure."
Assessor Dauphin said, "to completely get rid of personal property taxes would be very fiscally irresponsible of the state."
The campaign for Jay Ashcroft, the Secretary of State, said he's in the process of rolling out a more detailed tax policy platform.
"Secretary Ashcroft has been a leader in the fight against higher taxes," his campaign said. "He will be laying out a broad tax reform platform that creates fairness for individual taxpayers, who are shouldering a disproportionate burden compared to corporations in Missouri."
His statement included no specifics and took no position on personal property taxes at this time, though other conservative small-government think tanks have suggested shifting the personal property tax burden from used vehicles onto homeowners and property owners through a higher traditional property tax.
If you feel the notice you received in the mail is incorrect, you can still file an appeal on the Missouri State Tax Commission website. They have information on how to file your appeal.