Myrtle Beach City Council approves rollback millage rate for this fiscal year

During a special meeting Thursday, the Myrtle Beach City Council gave first-reading approval to the final millage rate for the current fiscal year.  The new property tax rate will be 78.9 mills, down from a proposed 83.5 mills.  

The new total includes an adjusted rollback millage rate of 69.9 mills for operations, six mills for debt service and a three mill tax increase to pay for 10 additional police positions.  The rollback rate is a de-crease of 4.6 mills, or 6.2 percent over last year’s millage rate for operations.  Second reading is scheduled for the August 13 regular Council meeting.  

Every five years, the state requires that real property is reassessed, and this was a reassessment year for Horry County.  Following reassessment, state law mandates that governments adjust their opera-tional millage rates to receive no more than one percent of what they would have collected before reassessment.  The attached chart uses a 7.5 percent increase in a property’s value to show what owners would expect to pay when they receive tax bills later this year.

The four-percent owner-occupied rate shown on the chart includes the 80-percent credit from the Tourism Development Fee.   For example, an $250,000 owner-occupied home that went up in value by 7.5 percent to $268,750 will pay $171 in city property taxes.  That’s $9 more than last year.  

The six-percent commercial or second-home rate shown on the chart also assumes an increase of 7.5 percent in value.  A $250,000 commercial or second-home property that increased in value to $268,750 will pay $1,272 in city property taxes this year.  That’s $64 more than last year.  

This chart doesn’t show it, but properties that remained stable and did not increase in value due to reassessment will pay less in property taxes this year than last year.  A $250,000 owner-occupied home will pay $3 less than last year, while a $250,000 commercial or second-home property that did not in-crease in value will pay $24 less than last year.