Winners crow over transfer-tax defeats

Realtors, homebuilders, and tax opponents are celebrating Tuesday's overwhelming rejection of a real-estate transfer tax in all 16 North Carolina counties where it was on the ballot.

"The good guys went 16-0 last night -- and all of them were blowouts," Tim Kent, chief executive of the N.C. Association of Realtors, said at a news conference in Raleigh. "Last night was an incredible victory for home-ownership and the protection of private property rights in our state. People sent the message that they absolutely do not want a targeted tax."

Statewide, the proposed 0.4 percent county tax on real-estate sales went down by an average of 4 to 1.

Proponents had said counties need the transfer tax to help pay for the unmet demands of growth.

But the measure's more energetic, better-financed, and better-organized opponents called it "a tax on the American dream." Raising the general sales tax or property tax is a fairer way to pay for public needs, they argued.

And they warned commissioners in other counties not to ask voters next year to approve a transfer tax, promising a fight anywhere it's put to a vote.

"There is simply not an appetite for a new tax on home ownership," Dallas Woodhouse, state director of Americans for Prosperity North Carolina, said at another news conference in Raleigh. "There is no reason to think the result would be any different in any other county. The taxpayers should be saved from further abuse."

Woodhouse issued a specific warning to fast-growing Wake County, whose commissioners are weighing whether to schedule a transfer-tax referendum next year.

"If they put a tax on the ballot, it'll get defeated," he said. "And so will some of the commissioners."