Why are Derry property taxes so high?
The current majority has had control of the state government for 8 of the last 10 years, our current set of legislators have been in office since 2020-2021.
Over that time the state has fought multiple legal battles against towns who say the state is not contributing enough money for the base adequacy, they lost those battles but have never provided the approximately $7,000/student that the courts rules was adequate. In fact the current representatives voted to change the definition of "Adequate Education" instead of raising the base adequacy (HB1815). They have now asked the state courts to vacate their previous rulings due to the changes made by HB1815. If this succeeds, the state will have no minimum amount it has to give towns. We have no illusion they will use that to bring the amount down as close to $0 as they can. That means Derry property owners will will end up paying close to 100% of school costs, instead of the roughly 75% now.
In NH the bulk of discretionary revenue comes from business taxes, roughly 39%!
The state has cut both business taxes over the last 10 years and our legislators voted to cut business taxes over the last 6 years.
- Business Profit Tax: went from 8.2% in 2016 to 7.5% in 2026
- Business Enterprise Tax: went from 0.72% in 2020 to 0.55% in 2026
While those cuts look small, it resulted in in a loss of roughly $795 million - $1.17 billion in combined BPT and BET business revenue.
In addition to cutting business taxes, our legislators repealed the "Interest & Dividend" tax, that has been in place since 1923 and was paid, primarily, wealthy individuals. For example Alex Karp, co-founder of Palantir.
This single tax cut removed more than $150 million/year in state revenue.