Death comes to us all. Life's but a walking shadow | In NY we have a system of uniform assessment on agricultural land (that land properly enrolled in the system that is) where each year the Commissioner of Ag calculates the economic value of the land based on prices, mortgage rates, soil classification and lot of other factors. All the taxing authorities are obligated to use these values to calculate assessed value on the actual farm land. Then they use their local tax to calculate the actual taxes paid. In my case most of my land is soil group II's so you can see from the chart below my land would be assessed in the $800-900 range. Since one of my farms lies on the county line I end up paying taxes in two towns and two counties and two school districts but total tax rate ends up being $30-32 per thousand. So you can see that the total tax per acres ends up being $25-$28 per acre for actual farm land and timberland is a lot less.
But that's not always where they get you. They also get to tax your residence at full rate and a house and house lot can easily be assessed at $100K to $200K. When you cost average buildings into the taxes then the tax rate starts to look much higher. That's why the first thing a farmer here does when they buy farm is to knock down the house (you can leave the barns because they're assessed different).
Of course, when you get near a city, everything changes, why it should I don't understand but it does. Needless to say, taxes are still one of my largest expenses as an item. Hope that helps.
 (Ag Value Chart 2008_2017-page-001.jpg)
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 Ag Value Chart 2008_2017-page-001.jpg (77KB - 130 downloads)
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90+million acres of soybeans
