Daily Archives: 11/03/2013

(Community Matters) Austin, AISD and Travis County should institute a process of suing commercial property owners who sue to lower tax appraisals and then sell their properties for substantially more than the lowered assessments. At the very least, any negotiated lowered assessments should include a clawback provision to recapture the lost property tax revenue if the property is sold for a higher price within some window of time.  AAS Large Companies Turn to Courts for Tax Relief. 

Last year, for example, through a protest to the appraisal district, Advanced Micro Devices got its valuation lowered for a third consecutive year by about $13 million, and its appraised “market value” now stands at $127.5 million. Yet in April, the company sold its complex for $164 million — $37.5 million more than the taxable value that AMD was disputing as too high.

in an email from our health insurance broker: I expect the renewal for EF to arrive in 30 days which will let us know if cost is going up or down for EF as a result of reform [Obamacare]. I had a preliminary estimate several months ago that indicated price for EF would go down dramatically.

update: Eddie Carter (our broker) saw my posting and wrote me. We’ve got to do a bit more analysis to make sure everything is apples to apples but appears our premiums are going down 43%.

As I’m looking at the various plans and premiums, appears there’s substantial incentive toward accountability. Plans with copays and deductibles are significantly discounted. Also appears costs for pay-everything-plans (no incentive to monitor or minimize costs) are increasing rather than decreasing. What the heck, set up a Health Savings Account (HSA), adopt a plan with at least a $1k deductible, help ensure good stewardship of health dollars, and bank the savings in your HSA – you can even invest those savings within the HSA, tax free!

(Community Matters) . . . unfortunately, turned into a trip around Central Texas. Tana and I detected car trouble after stopping at the Dollar General Store in Fredericksburg. MBrace told us we should head to the nearest dealership (Boerne, Tx) to have the situation further evaluated. They were spectacular to us – bumped us ahead of 13 other jobs and detected a fix that would take only 30 minutes. Unfortunately, it’d be Tuesday before they could have the part. We drove back to Austin, not without some car performance issues. Since I had a hard stop of returning home Tuesday for our Annual Entrepreneurs Poker Tournament on Wednesday and have a MPR board meeting in Marfa on Saturday, I’m out of the picture. Outside the 72 hours cancellation window, there’s a free room at the Santa Barbara Biltmore Hotel (Four Seasons) on Monday night. Also bummed we missed last night at El Capitan in Van Horne.