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Plants_Golf_Cooking t1_iugb22n wrote

Unnecessary luxury items get taxed, and I would imagine this includes unnecessary luxuries like animals. I pay to register my dog. Horses and ponies require land that is unproductive for any other purpose, and unless you are doing pre-industrial style farming then I imagine you are not using them as draft animals.

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Ds87878 t1_iuhon2n wrote

You’d be wrong then. On both accounts. Great work. In fact. Pastureland can be tax exempt by deeming it open space. I pull logs with my horses and work my cattle around with them. They are farm equipment.

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Plants_Golf_Cooking t1_iuht591 wrote

And though that is great for you, I have my doubts OP is using her ponies as draft animals. But I’m open to the possibility of being wrong. And I’m sorry, are we talking about tax-exempt pasture land or the ponies on that land, because I could have sworn we were talking about animals, not land. Again though, open to being wrong. Great work on your response though.

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PettyWitch t1_iui80kg wrote

The good news is we should all be paying annual taxes on much of our personal property, and that includes furniture and computers. Here is the form for the town of Killingly:

https://www.killingly.org/sites/g/files/vyhlif4581/f/uploads/2022_short_form.pdf

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Plants_Golf_Cooking t1_iui8s9o wrote

I could very much be mistaken, but that seems related to business matters, as in the property of a business, for this purpose to include furniture. Again, I could be misinterpreting the form, however if not that does seem like extra senseless scraping by the state.

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PettyWitch t1_iui98fr wrote

Nope, it is also property on your personal residence. Unaffixed property. So you might want to get this sorted out with your town, you know, do your part.

"In Connecticut, personal property taxes are paid by individuals and companies that have property that is not permanently affixed to or part of real estate.

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PettyWitch t1_iuhpr8g wrote

I actually pull logs with my ponies too. I have a sheep farm.

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Plants_Golf_Cooking t1_iuhua2j wrote

That is what I’m looking for. Firstly, I congratulate you on using them as proper draft animals. Still, to your original question though; the god’s honest truth is I can’t see a reason why they wouldn’t be taxed. Government needs to raise money, so things get taxed; property of all kind including horses. Frankly, it makes more sense to me for a government to raise money taxing a horse than someone’s labour, but that is just me. However, it seems that one’s used exclusively for labour/farming are exempted from that tax, at least according to this link I found:

https://www.cga.ct.gov/2010/rpt/2010-R-0473.htm#:~:text=The%20New%20England%20states%2C%20including,assess%20horses%20for%20property%20taxes.&text=Connecticut%20law%20treats%20horses%20as,of%20their%20fair%20market%20value.

So if they are not used exclusively or even primarily for farming then I can certainly see how they constitute more as a “luxury”.

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