I dread January. Not just because it is cold but also because I have to start thinking about income taxes and our state legislature comes back into session. Every year you can be guaranteed that someone in the legislature will propose a bill that will make it harder for me to be a landlord. A bill I will have to oppose. This year is no different.
This year it is HB 2227. If you are an investor in Tennessee, you should be concerned about this bill. This bill will create a registry of all rental properties and their owners, charge me for the privilege of registering and then threaten me with fines and eventual jail time if I fail to register. It would also require me to create a registry of all of my tenants by keeping a copy of an “appropriate ID.”
A registry is unnecessary as the county property assessors have that data anyway and why do they care who I rent my properties to? I suspect there is more to this bill that will come out in the coming years. This bill will do nothing but create a further burden on an already burdened industry. It is all about gaining more control over the real estate investing industry.
I guess they think I don’t have enough to do in my business. I now have to shift time and resources towards fighting this bill. Time and resources that could be used much more productively growing my business.
I do not know who said it but I tend to agree more and more with this quote every year, “Our legislature meets once a year for 99 days. But I wish they met for only one day every 99 years.”
I’ll have more to come on this issue as it develops.
