The folks who allow this crap on their signs now get a tax break to do it.
Billboards in Wisconsin, per the budget awaiting Gov. Scott Walker’s signature, are no longer considered “
real property” in the tax code. They will be considered “
personal property” and taxed as such. What this means is that communities across the state will
lose money.
The net effect of the change in the budget bill is that billboards would be classified as personal property. That means, according to [Milwaukee Mayor Tom] Barrett, that assessments of billboards in Milwaukee alone will drop from $76 million to $6.6 million.
That is an awful lot of money that the City of Milwaukee will have to make up by raising taxes on homeowners.
The reason for this change? Adams Outdoor Advertising (based in Atlanta), Lamar Outdoor Advertising (Based in Baton Rouge), and Clear Channel Outdoor (based in Phoenix), have donated over $85,000 since 2000 to various legislators in Wisconsin, the vast majority of that money going to Republican candidates. This change was bought and paid for by the outdoor advertising industry.
Of course lost tax revenue is not the only side effect of this “budget change.” In Madison new billboards are banned and existing signs are grandfathered into the law; however, if a public works project requires a sign to be removed the city must pay the sign company for the value of the sign, that the city cannot assess because it is not real property—so the city has no way to know what the sign is really worth.