Request By:
Mr. Charles T. Mattingly
Marion County Attorney
10 Court Square
Lebanon, Kentucky 40033
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By Alex W. Rose, Assistant Attorney General
In your letter to the Attorney General you ask whether the county may exempt from property taxes a piece of property which is privately owned but is used by the City of Lebanon. The city pays no rent but has agreed to pay the property taxes on the property for the owners.
Section 170 of the Kentucky Constitution sets out the sum total of exemptions from property tax. One of those exemptions is "public property used for public purposes". For property to qualify for this exemption, it must be owned by a public body.
Inter-County Rural Electric Cooperative Corp. v. Reeves, 294 Ky. 458, 171 S.W.2d 978 (1943). Since the property in question is privately owned it canot be exempted from property tax, unless it or the owners were to come under one of the other § 170 exemptions.
The courts have, in certain cases, allowed the use of the property to be a factor in determining whether property was exempt. However, that consideration has been limited to only two categories of § 170 exemptions: (1) "places actually used for religious worship",