The Burial Property Exemption

As a child of the 80’s, questions about the Machinery Act’s treatment of burial grounds immediately bring to mind the classic horror movie Poltergeist. (TL;DR for younger readers: don’t buy a house built on an old cemetery.)  I don’t have any great ideas about how to deal with malevolent ghosts. But I do have thoughts on how to apply the revised exemption for private burial property that took effect starting with the 2022 tax year.

Under the old version of GS 105-278.2(b), private burial property not held for sale was taxable but could qualify for a lower valuation depending on factors such as whether the property was “irrevocably dedicated for human burial purposes by plat recorded with the Register of Deeds” and whether the owner was “prohibited or restricted by law . . . from selling, mortgaging, leasing, or encumbering” the property.

The new version of GS 105-278.2(b) makes private burial property not held for sale fully exempt from taxation.  This exemption does not require an application, nor can it be denied to the lack of “a survey or plat detailing the exempt property.”

These changes present at least two potentially problematic administrative challenges.

The first challenge is the provision’s ambiguous language.  It applies only to property “set apart for burial purposes.”  What exactly does this phrase mean? Under the old provision, an assessor could demand proof from the taxpayer that the property was subject to use and transfer restrictions via a plat, deed, or other legal instrument.  But the new provision explicitly eliminates that option.