Last year, I applied for a reduction in my property taxes. The city approved my claim and reduced my tax bill 25 percent.
Each year, the city re-evaluates all reductions and can raise the tax bill if property values have risen. I’ve been nervous over the last two months as the city re-evaluated our home. Our home is not worth any more than it was last year – perhaps it’s worth even less – but when it comes to government and needing money, they usually err in their favor (trust me. I can say this. I’m a government employee and…that’s what we do).
I opened the mail over the weekend and found an official letter from my city. It said…
they have decided my home value is stagnant and have approved another year at the reduced tax rate!
Yes!!!
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Posted: July 6th, 2010 at 6:41 am
Sometimes they will simply increase the MILLAGE rate instead of assessing your home at a higher value. It accomplishes the same thing: More money for the government.
Now my home value dropped since I bought my home in June 2008. While my neighbors were angry over the decline in prices… I was actually happy about it. Only because 1)I plan to stay in the home for a LONG LONG time.. 2)I plan to pay this house OFF 3)My taxes went waaay down!
Posted: July 6th, 2010 at 10:30 am
In my town they’ve lowered the assessments but raised the rates so we end up paying more anyway.
Not that it’s a surprise. I assume the property taxes will go up.
Posted: July 6th, 2010 at 1:13 pm
In California, ir’s not the City, it’s the County that is responsible for property valuation and tax collection. The County of San Diego revalued your property based on comparable sales and found the value had not changed significantly from January 1, 2009 to January 1, 2010.
California is also subject to the rules of Prop 13. That means the property tax rate is set at one percent of the assessed value, plus existing bonded indebtedness and special assessments. No fiddling with the mill rate here to maintain revenue levels. Over the years, more bond measures and parcel taxes have been added by the voters (requires a 2/3 majority), so the actual tax rate is typically between 1.15 and 1.3 percent of the assessed value plus the special assessments and the direct service charges such as sewer charges.
Posted: July 7th, 2010 at 7:40 am
They are reluctant to lower the rates since states are in need of the money. Our county did an across the board reduction of about 12%. That’s a bit low in my opinion, but at least they recognized values had declined significan’t and they couldn’t justify the property tax rate – for the moment anyway. We also put in the paperwork for my disabled husband, which reduced our rate almost $100. We were able to go back to the year 2007 when they introduced this exemption. Every little bit helps!
Posted: July 7th, 2010 at 11:26 am
I’d heard about Prop 13, but I couldn’t remember the details other than is made it difficult to raise property taxes. Thanks for the explanation, Another Reader!
In MA, we have Prop 2 1/2 – we don’t number our propositions sequentially like Californians do, we name them. Or at least we just know them by their names. Prop 2 1/2 prevents cities and towns from raising the overall rate by more than 2.5% without a voter override.
Posted: July 7th, 2010 at 3:23 pm
I am in Sacramento. I agree with Another Reader. No changing rates or anything like that, here.
That said, our assessor just lowered all parcels across the board (to the low side). I was surprised how low our assessment was last year (considering we had an appraisal for a refi about the same date as the assessment). BUT, they will probably save a fortune not having to lower assessments for everyone again, this year. Nor will they get a ton of disputes. In the end, they were probably just trying to make it as painless as possible, for themselves. That, and they probably had such massive amounts of property to evaluate – they probably weren’t overly thorough – just tried to get in the ballpark.
Not all surrounding counties did it that way, though. Most were much more aggressive on their assessments.