HB 1086 – Property tax deduction for free golf to students

House Bill 1086 – Rep. Bischoff:

Property tax deduction for free golf for students. Provides a property tax deduction for an owner of a commercial golf course who allows elementary or secondary school students to use the golf course without charge.

Being the product of an excellent junior golf program (my game notwithstanding – the program has at least one tour pro to its name), I’m all for encouraging young people to golf. But with tight budgets as a factor, I’d guess this would have to be a pretty low priority.

The fiscal impact statement (pdf) notes as follows:

The deduction would cause a shift from the property taxes paid by the golf course owner to other taxpayers. The amount of the shift is unknown but would depend on the amount of free golf provided by the course to students and the percentage that the course’s assessed valuation is of the total assessed valuation of the taxing district.

. . .

Green fees range from $10 to $50 for 18 holes of golf. The average green fees are about $20. The assessed valuation of about 140 commercial golf courses is about $177.5 M. Approximately 355 high schools have a boy’s golf team, and 277 high schools have a girl’s golf team.

My suspicion is that any donations of time would probably be for times of the day where the course wasn’t much being used anyway — weekday afternoons in the spring and fall and perhaps times like Monday during the day during the summer. The donation would obviously impact the course a bit — any given round of golf is going to have some sort of impact, but probably would not lower the revenue of golf courses from green’s fees. Long term, such donations are probably beneficial to the industry overall since kids who play golf are more likely to become adults who play golf who teach their own kids to play golf, etc.

[tags]HB1086-2007, taxation[/tags]