Taxes are part of the American milieu, but so also is the annual game of trying to circumvent or to reduce one's taxes that are owed. Depending upon the county or State that you live in, as well as the valuation of your property, property taxes may be something that you will have to do battle with or might consider doing battle with, at least, occasionally. For instance, in the county that I live in, my property taxes recently jumped 23% in one year, and while it is true that property taxes can be lowered in my county as well as being increased, when it came time to lower my taxes in the maelstrom of 2008 banking and housing crisis, the better part of valor was for me to submit an appeal for lower taxes first, rather than wait for the property tax authorities, if ever, to get around to reducing my taxes at all.
In my county, they start the property tax process off by mailing you a one-page form called the "Annual Notice of Assessment" which simply states that although this is not the actual Property Tax bill, your property value is changing to such and such value. What this means to the property taxpayer is that the valuation of your property has been determined and contained within this form they will state the last date that you have to file an appeal of this valuation. While different counties allow appeals to be done in different ways, such as via email, or via FAX, in my county, your appeal must be done in writing and you must also utilize the appropriate government appeal form. If, for some reason, you don't fill out your appeal form correctly or if you appeal later than the appropriate cutoff date, you will, by definition, lose. When formulating your appeal, to be taken seriously, you must demonstrate through some proof as to why the proposed value for your home is incorrect. The best way to do so is to obtain documentation of comparables in the correct fiscal year that are applicable to your property valuation. For instance, while taxes are due no later than October 15th in my county, the valuation is of your home as of December 31st of the previous year. If you fail to understand this, or if you fail to understand how to best do comparables in your community, your chances of success are substantially reduced. Once your appeal is received, you will get notice, typically within six weeks, to which your appeal will either win, or lose, or be rejected because of some error in filling out the form or whatnot. If you win, that appeal amount will be the amount that your property will be assessed for on your Property Tax bill. If you lose, you will receive a notice that states: "…its decision was to not make any change in the valuation."
If you lose, that decision does not mean that the game is over, because in my county, you can appeal to the Board of Equalization. The Board of Equalization, is made up of three members, all of whom live in the same county as you do, to which, you will appear and face these three members of the Board, as well as a representative from the Tax Assessors' office. There are, however, some very important features of this hearing which are extremely prejudicial to the appealer. The first is that the Tax Assessor already has your appeal basis documentation, but you, on the other hand, do not have the Tax Assessors' documentation as to how they determined your property value, and won't receive this information until the actual hearing. Additionally, there are two more problems, when you first walk into the room, the Tax Assessor representative will already be in the room ahead of you and in the company of the Board of Equalization, and further troubling is the fact that only the representative from the Tax Assessors' office controls the audio/visual display of your property as well as comparable properties on the screen that is primarily for the viewing pleasure of the Board of Equalization. Although each party gets a chance to state their case, it is a huge inherent advantage for the Tax Assessors' office to have the pertinent information that you have not previously been privileged to have access to. In any event, each side has its say, and each can cross-examine the other, to which the whole affair only lasts some twenty minutes or so. The board will then render their decision, majority rules, and in my case it was unharmonious against me.
But, once again, that does not mean that the appeal is over. As a taxpayer, you are allowed to appeal this decision to Superior Court, to which I filled out the form to do so. In the process of filling this appeal, I was told that I didn't need to pay anything or to proceed any further, because first they would try to mediate things between myself and the Tax Assessors' office via phone. I was told that often a compromised price could be arranged. I was intrigued by this information, because Superior Court, was that proverbial lose/lose situation. I would lose, first by virtue of having to put up $200 odd dollars or so to make the appeal, and the county would surely lose by having to set aside a court room, jurors, judge, bailiff and the like, and all of this before any decision would be reached. In due time, I was able to talk with my Tax Assessor, a reasonable person, and come to a successful conclusion of my appeal, to which I got an 83% reduction of their proposed assessment increase, meaning that I got most of what I wanted.
So to sum up, they raised my property taxes; I appealed by mail and lost. I then appealed to the Board of Equalization and lost. Lastly, I was willing to take my final appeal to Superior Court, whereupon through phone mediation, and after further review, they saw the merit behind my appeal, and gave me most everything that I had desired in the first place. How many taxpayers would be willing to do what I did? I don't know, but to make change, you must be willing to agitate, and to do your homework, and to not give up.