HBA Legislative Agenda to focus on taxes and fees paid by Home Builders

The HBA of South Carolina announced its legislative agenda for 2011. Click here to read the entire agenda.

Central to the agenda are four issues where your Home Builders Association has set out to directly save home builders money.

Multi-Lot Discount
The Multi-Lot Discount benefits builders and developers who hold at least 10 finished lots that have not yet been improved with a house. The program discounts the value of the lots to its pre-development value until a house is constructed on the lot.

When this program was implemented in the late 90s, the result of the legislative efforts of your Home Builders Association, the maximum time a lot could benefit from the discount was five years. At that time no one could imagine a housing downturn like we have recently experienced.

As a result, the HBA of South Carolina will lobby to extend to seven years the amount of time a builder or developer can qualify for the discount.

Impact Fees
Continue to defend this crucial statute, which your Home Builders Association lobbied for passage in the late 90s. This law insures that impact fees are proportionate to the impact that development has on government infrastructure and also insures that impact fees are not collected for a purpose for which development does not have an impact.

Each year government work to chip away at this important law. Efforts are underway in several jurisdictions, primarily along the coast, to water down this law. Your Home Builders Association will take steps to protect the law and strengthen where appropriate.

Multiple Business Licenses
Your Home Builders Association of Greenville, along with other HBAs around the state, have called on the HBA of South Carolina to address a trend in local government of taxing businesses multiple times on the same volume of business. The HBA of South Carolina will work to pass a simple, more predictable method of assessing and collecting business license fees in South Carolina.

Local Government Regulatory Reform
Local governments have increasingly raised fees and permit charges on the construction industry to increase funding generated. The increases can be found in tap fees, sewer connection charges, and road maintenance and expansion fees. Your Home Builders Association will work to curb this growth in fees and apply the same principals to government regulatory fees that were applied to development impact fees.

You can click here to read the entire Home Builders Legislative Agenda.

Bird Supper
A key way that you can participate in this legislative program is to attend the Bird Supper. This event is where Home Builders from around the state come together to talk to their legislators about this legislative agenda.

When: Wednesday, March 23
Where: Columbia, SC