Northampton plans to lower farm-equipment tax rates

Northampton County will move forward with its $34 million budget plan for Fiscal Year 2021-22 after a public hearing during which nobody spoke.

The budget does not include any tax increases. On a request by Supervisor Betsy Mapp, the county is poised to lower its tax rate on farm machinery.

Mapp, during a meeting on Tuesday, said it “really galls me” that the tax on boats, of 99 cents per assessed $100, is lower than the county’s farm equipment tax rate of $1.20 per assessed $100.

“It just doesn’t seem fair,” she said.

Supervisor Dixon Leatherbury, who said he worked in the farm equipment machinery business for 40 years, said Northampton’s tax is “among the highest tax rates on farm machinery in the entire country.”

Less than half the counties in Virginia have a farm machinery tax, he said.

“It is a core industry,” Leatherbury said of agriculture.

The supervisors tentatively agreed to reduce the farm machinery rate by 20 percent.