Oh the things we will do to keep OUR money...

Remember a while back when I told you we put cows on our land to keep our agricultural tax exemption. Oh and just so we're clear, exemption does not mean free from. The proper word should be discount.


Well as I mentioned in that earlier post we had gone through a few options, one of which was to cut grass for hay. Now it was going to be a little time consuming so D knew a guy at work who said he would lease the land from us to cut hay, thus giving us the ag exemption. Sweet right? No. He kept having issues that prevented him from doing it and before long, the year had passed without us having done anything 'agricultural' on the land. The tax man cometh. In the form of a certified letter.


Our next lesser evil option was to put cattle out there. D owns a few cows that are currently residing on his parent's land. I was gifted a cow from my inlaws several Christmases ago. So we decided to move three extremely old not-going-to-jump-the-fence cows from their herd to our land. Brilliant plan as we were only out the fencing required to span the width of the land to keep the cows on the pond-side not on the house pad-side of the property. Are you all just waiting on the edge of your chairs with this interesting story? I know I am.


Here's where it gets a little more fun. We were denied ag exemption for last year since the appraiser didn't see any ag stuff going on. So we had to send in an appeal. The letter we received said we had 30 days from the date of the letter to turn in the appeal. The letter was dated May 15th. D turned in our form on June 8th.


When he went in to turn in the paper, the woman told him the deadline for appeals had passed. He showed her the letter and she said 'oh' and took our appeal. No surprise here, we then get another letter that says we are denied ag exemption and to appeal we must go before the Board for a hearing Monday (July 20th) at 9am. Oh but first, we have to go in early to show 'just cause' as to why we were late filing our appeal.


Fortunately, D had off and didn't have to take a vacation day to defend our ag exemption.


First he met with the appraiser, Phillip. {Names have not been changed since there are no innocents to protect.} D had to show him the letter we got with the due date for the appeal on it. "Oh" says Phillip. "I didn't know we sent you that." You think, Phillip, that you could look through your freakin' files and note that you sent us a letter with a due date, and that we turned in our paperwork well before that due date so that my husband wouldn't have to get to your office at the butt crack of dawn and could stay at home in bed with me on his ONE DAY OFF, huh!?!?! Oh I guess that is asking a bit much of a bureaucrat. I mean what with all the trips out to our land to measure which side of the fence the cow patties are on, how ever would you have the time to look through the files right?

Phillip then tells D all he can give him exemption on is one third of the land. Why? D asks. The cows are currently fenced on over half of the land. Then D has to show Phillip where the fence is on a photo Phillip took. Oh says Phillip. Then all I can give you is exemption on one half of the land. Sigh. D says 'why only half if I rotate my stock from one half to the other.' Phillip says 'well you have to show proof that you are doing that.' Oh we know, Phillip, we know--you are going to need proof.

Okay. So then D gets to sit in the office and wait until his 9am appointment with the appeals board. Fortunately there are some real people, even a couple of cattlemen, on this board. D gets our exemption/discount without any problems. Oh except all we have to do is turn in the receipt for that hay lease.

I am so peeved that he had to spend even two minutes of his free time doing this, let alone several hours. Why is our government so entitled to our money? Our founding fathers would be more than appalled at our country today.

Read the book "The Five Thousand Year Leap" by Skousen. Absolutely enlightening. I think it should be required reading in American History classes. It was written almost 30 years ago. Spot on for today, because our founding fathers really were quite clairvoyant when it came to seeing where we were headed.