I have a file sitting on my desk explaining all about this subject. I had a beautiful farm picked out BUT I couldn't buy it as it had not been farmed in 2 yrs so I would have had to pay over 20 grand to the town in taxes & then reapply for farmland which I may or may not have gotten. Some people do abuse the farm tax, many do not. Most of the elderly farmers depend on farm taxes in order to keep their farms or the developers come in & NJ really doesn't need any more strip malls or condo's etc.
The Press makes it sound so easy & simple. It is not by any means. For each year a farm sits idle when you buy it you pay the town the back taxes for for it not being a farm. You can not just decide one day I am going to get farmland tax breaks either & its the middle class small farmer who suffers. We have many horse farms here who depend on this break. Lots of farm stands who do grow veggies & fruit. I can see it growing. Maybe these taxmen ought to go check out the rock stars who can afford to pay huge taxes as we in NJ even if we are not on farms are taxed higher then most in the damn country. And maybe they ought to check their horses out too as a certain wife to one of those super stars damn near starved her kid's pony! Since I rescue horses I don't want to get on a rant on that. However this article makes it seem like everybody is scamming. Well they aren't. The rich rock stars should pay their taxes & the taxman should be looking into this for sure. IF they are truly farming then they deserve to get their break. But not as low as Max Weinburg does...I don't know any farmer getting breaks like these stars are. But I know normal hard working farmers who work 2 jobs to keep the family farm... However this is NJ where the rich get the perks & the middle class & poor get $hit on. There is much more to this problem & because some people want farms to stay it will take awhile to check into this....Its NJ! GRR!
Thanks for putting some detail and perspective into this story.