As we wrote about earlier this year, Washington County put into effect its reassessment, the first since the 1980s. Along with new values (the County was using a pre-determined ratio of 25% of the 1981 base year, and moved this to 100% of the 2015 base year) the three taxing bodies (county, municipal, and school district) had to recalculate millage rates to comply with state laws and the new values.
Obviously there were going to be people who were unhappy with their new values and the resulting taxes, depending on how that ended up affecting them. Just recently we wrote that there were not a lot of appeals because people saw that the impact was not that bad.
But a recent article stated that folks who are not happy are taking their frustration out on their elected officials. Not too much of a quibble with that, but apparently some of the frustration is going to County Commissioners (responsible for carrying out the reassessment) over school taxes (school directors are not responsible for carrying out a reassessment). As the County’s solicitor noted, “Obviously, if a person’s assessment was tax-neutral from the assessment’s point of view, they would have gotten an increase in their school tax bills that had nothing to do with their assessment…For a particular taxpayer, their taxes could go up greater because of an increase in their assessment, or they could go down lower because of a decrease in their assessment”. One of the Commissioners even pointed out the difference in enacting tax increases following the reassessment as noted in the Brief linked above.
In two years before the reassessment in Washington County (2013-14 and 2014-15) 13 of the 14 school districts increased millage rates–did people who were furious go and complain to their school directors, or the municipal manager?
If the people who were upset about a big increase in their value compared to the rest of the taxing body (county, municipal, or school district) then had a school increase tacked on to that it probably indicates where their property value stood for a long time without a reassessment. As we noted way back in 2009, “Getting assessments as accurate as possible is about ensuring fairness. To the extent assessments are erroneously high for some properties and low for others, increases in school or municipal millage rates exacerbate the unfairness of frozen inaccurate assessments. When assessments are accurate, the tax burden, at whatever level, is shared equitably.”
