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A Tax Rate Area (TRA) is a small geographical area within the county that contains properties that are all served by a unique combination of local governments—the county, a city, and the same set of special districts and school districts. A single county may have thousands of TRAs. While there is considerable variation in the steps county auditors use to allocate revenue within each TRA, typically the county auditor annually determines how much revenue was collected in each TRA and first allocates to each local government in the TRA the same amount of revenue it received in the prior year. Each local government then receives a share of any growth (or loss) in revenue that occurred within the TRA that year. Each TRA has a set of growth factors that specify the proportion of revenue growth that goes to each local government. These factors—developed by county auditors pursuant to AB 8—are largely based on the share of revenue each local government received from the TRA during the late 1970s. |