Free tax ride to end at Barrow airport

“The taxpayers were sent, by certified mail, a letter stating that it had come to the attention of this office that they may have had an aircraft that was taxable in Barrow County for the 2008 digest,” Highfield said in an e-mail to the Barrow Journal. “Along with this letter we sent a reporting form for (the) aircraft and asked for it to be completed and mailed back to our office.”

Over the past month, assessors twice have gone to the county-owned airport to photograph planes in order to help establish their taxable values. They also have been examining the validity of owners’ justifications for why their aircraft shouldn’t be taxed.

Nocera said last week that he was the one who had raised the airport tax issue, that he had “paid all the bills I’ve received” and had filed his tax return and “put everything on it I was told to.”

But other sources said the issue had first been raised last month by new Barrow County Board of Commissioners member Steve Worley, who inquired about airplane taxes.

Worley, who in his role as the City of Monroe’s public works director oversees that town’s airport, said he began asking questions about taxes generated at the Barrow airport in February.

“Since I run the airport operation at the City of Monroe, part of my job is to make sure the tax assessor’s office has the information on the planes based there to make sure the owners are paying their taxes,” Worley said. “From time to time, I will have one where the owner will not be on the tax digest. Every airport has one that will slip through the cracks.”

HALF MISSING

When Worley compared county tax data to a list of planes at Barrow’s airport, he didn’t find just one plane missing from the 2008 digest — he discovered nearly half of the 106 or so planes at the airport either had overdue taxes, or had never been taxed.

“I want to know why these folks aren’t on the tax digest and if they are supposed to be paying taxes on these planes,” Worley said.

On Feb. 17, the date that the newly-appointed Barrow County Airport Authority first met as a group, Worley presented his information to Airport Director Glen Boyd and to Nocera and told them to work with the tax assessor’s office to clear up the questions.

But Worley said he hadn’t expected Nocera’s planes to wind up on the list of untaxed aircraft.

“His name appears to have popped up,” Worley said. “I want everybody on the list to be checked out and to make sure business is being conducted the way it’s supposed to be, cut and dry…”

WHAT THE DOCUMENTS SHOW

Airport leases require aircraft owners to file annual tax returns on their planes and to pay their taxes on time.
But many are not filed and taxes are not paid.

Worley’s documents show that 106 airplanes were housed at the county airport for at least a portion of 2008.

Owners of a little over half of those planes – 58 – paid $56,655 in county taxes. Another $15,896 in taxes on 14 planes is past due, and 32 planes were not taxed at all.

County staff noted on the documents why some of those planes weren’t taxed. A half dozen were not on the ’08 tax digest because they had not been under an airport lease as of Jan. 1. The owners of several other planes claimed that their planes had been sold, were worth less than the $7,500 threshold for taxation, or were “home based” elsewhere. Several planes had no explanation for why they hadn’t been taxed.

Former Airport Authority Chairman Vaughn Reynolds said that he had raised some of the same questions 10 years ago and is glad to see Worley pushing it again.

“It’s about damn time,” Reynolds said. “If he’s digging to try to get people evading their taxes, you’re damn right I’m supporting him. That’s hurting me. It’s hurting all taxpayers. It’s costing people their jobs.”

NOCERA’S RETURN INCOMPLETE

Nocera did pay property taxes on his local hangar in 2007 and 2008, but he didn’t file his first return for his planes until Feb. 18, 2009, the day after Worley first raised the issue.

Even so, Nocera’s ’09 tax return for his planes is incomplete, bearing only his name and mailing address on the one-page return, and a notation that his planes are “not airworthy” on a supplemental schedule, according to Highfield.

On his return, Nocera did not list his planes, their registration N numbers, or their taxable value as of Jan. 1. He also did not sign the form’s statement by which he was to swear that he is claiming his planes’ “true market value” and has not done anything to evade taxes. Without that signature, the return is not valid, according to the assessor’s office.

“Of course the return is no good,” said Highfield in an e-mail to the Barrow Journal. “It doesn’t indicate there is a taxable aircraft at the airport.”

The chief assessor said his staff plans to look at Nocera’s planes. In their prior visits to the airport, they were unable to photograph the planes because they are in a locked hangar, he said.

But Nocera said the tax assessor’s office already knew about one of his planes, a restored, yellow 1959 Cessna 150. Highfield contends, however, his office did not know about that plane.

Nocera said that plane isn’t taxable because it isn’t worth $7,500. However, when the plane was taxed by Jackson County in 2002, it had a fair market value of around $28,000 — 2.5 times the assessed value of $11,300 — on which it was taxed that one year, said Jackson County Tax Commissioner Donald T. Elrod.

Nocera said he didn’t realize Barrow’s tax office didn’t know about his other plane, a restored 1957 Cessna 182. But he contended that airplane also isn’t worth much because both planes are really hobbies or projects.

However, in an online ad for the plane that he posted on a website a few months ago, Nocera called the red ’57 Cessna “the most beautiful Cessna 182 flying today” and priced it at $125,000.

For his part, Worley said everyone should be following the rules.

“If people are not doing what they’re supposed to, then there’s concern for your actions, I don’t care who you are,” he said. “Let’s take care of it, get it behind us, and let’s go on and everybody abide by the rules. If you owe taxes, pay them. If not, you can’t stay at that airport. Nothing I know of is a free ride anymore.”