More Businesses Keeping Cattle For Agricultural Tax Credit
From Cattle Network Web site
Westlake, Texas – When Dale Rector dropped by Fidelity Investments' 401(k) customer-services operation in this Fort Worth suburb recently, he wasn't looking for mutual-fund advice. He was checking for cow dung. "It helps if it's fresh," he says. For Rector, a county land appraiser, such evidence helps prove that, since Fidelity keeps 24 Longhorn cattle roaming and munching grass on the property.
Their presence gives Fidelity an "agricultural exemption" under the state property-tax laws covering 179 acres of the 340-acre corporate campus. By getting a little bullish, Fidelity reduces its county property-tax bill for that portion of its land to $714.57 from $319,417, according to property records from Tarrant and Denton counties, which oversee Fidelity's land.
The state's agricultural exemption, which dates back to 1966, was intended to benefit full-time farmers and ranchers, and it still does. But as voter referendums have loosened the exemption's requirements over the years – over the objections of municipal and school-district officials who have lost revenue – it has been used by dozens of corporations that stick a few cows or birdhouses around their offices.
It has "gone from being a benefit for farmers to a benefit for major corporations," says Randy Armstrong, a county appraiser in Fort Worth, TX. To qualify for the tax break, landowners just have to show that their property is being "used wholly or in part" for raising livestock, growing crops or preserving wildlife. Allowed are 16 categories of creatures and crops, including ostriches, pygmy goats, emus and vegetation that allows indigenous birds to "escape cover from enemies." Deer hunting on one's own land "to prevent overuse of desirable plant species" also qualifies. Read more on CattleNetwork.com.
TSCRA Special Rangers Featured on Christian Science Monitor Web site
Cattle rustling has made the pages of one of the oldest and most read magazines in the world, the Christian Science Monitor (CSM). In the July 23, 2007 edition of the CSM, a feature highlighting the recent increase in cattle rustling was noted by the introduction of a new Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raiser Association (TSCRA) Special Ranger John Cummings. The article gives an interesting sample of a TSCRA Special Rangers duty and a few stories about their work. Read the full story on the Christian Science Monitor Web site.
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