Should taxing bodies be able to appeal property values based on the sales price of the property compared to its assessed value? Opinions differ on the matter. In Allegheny County last year taxing bodies filed 3,853 appeals (7,143 appeals in total were filed). Legislation pending in the General Assembly would prohibit the practice. The legislation would permit appeals on values following a countywide reassessment filed by September 1 or the appeal date established by the county in the year after the reassessment, if the land is divided, or if the property’s use changes.
The legislation is similar to an effort undertaken about a decade ago through similar House and Senate bills which were ultimately vetoed by the Governor at the time, which we noted in a 2014 Policy Brief. In his veto message he noted “… new homeowners who purchase their homes based on one set of assumptions about their property taxes (that is, the property tax rate prior to purchase), only to find that they are required to pay much more in taxes than they expected or can even afford upon a school district’s successful appeal of the fair market value of their property”. However, without a regular cycle of reassessments, the Governor felt he had to veto and called for the long-term solution to the problem, which would be “…regular assessments at the county level”.
Since that 2008 veto, 16 counties have or are planning a reassessment, and there is still no legislative mandate on when a reassessment has to happen. One observer of the issue noted in the article that the meaningful change would be a regular assessment schedule–nine years after the Governor at the time called for it.
