Skunks and chipmunks help American companies curtail their taxes

Companies in Texas, raise cows at farms specially organized close to their enterprises and cultivate wheat. They also register skunks and chipmunks living on the premises, build birdhouses and fight against ants. The Russian newspaper Vedomosti reports that all the above is done to cut the real estate tax several times.

Photo: Skunks and chipmunks help American companies curtail their taxes

Tax remissions for agricultural producers were introduced especially for professional farmers in Texas in 1966. Later, the terms for getting the tax remissions were eased for municipal officials and officials working in the educational sphere who were also keeping agriculture.

Today, dozens of corporations enjoy the tax remissions and have to keep farms. To get tax remissions now ground landlords just need to demonstrate that their property, their land is partially or completely used for ranching cattle, raising crops or preserving wilderness.

There are sixteen kinds of animals and plants including ostriches, pigmy goats and emus, and also plants giving shelter to wild birds that actually give corporations the right to expect remission of the real estate tax in case these companies cultivate them. Tax remissions are also offered to companies that hunt deer to save fine woods that deer usually destroy by eating.

And big companies usually seek every opportunity to enjoy the real estate tax remissions. In 2006, Samsung Electronics built ten birdhouses on the premises of its transistor factory in Austin, spread aerosol against red ants there and also ordered making a register of the local fauna. The actions curtailed the company’s real estate tax put on the particular object in Austin from $21,000 to $135.7.

Near Houston, ExxonMobil cultivates trees and raises cattle on the territory of old oil-fields that the company owns and has to pay $1.2 million instead of $38 million thanks to its agriculture activity.

However, the tax abatement is not available for all. Senior broker from Fort Worth John Marshall says that a family who had glowworms on their garden plot also claimed the tax remission but was turned down.

Translated by Maria Kapitanova
Pravda.ru