This year for the first time, Maryland lets homeowners look online for the county analysis of their property, called a worksheet, before they file an appeal, Sullivan said. In the past, you had to file the appeal before you saw the worksheet.
Getting the information on that worksheet is imperative, said Joe Warren, an Arlington County resident who unsuccessfully appealed in 2002. He says the county "didn't tell me about the worksheet" and then balked when he demanded to talk to his assessor and other higher-ups. Warren says he believed the county estimate was $20,000 too high on his two-bedroom, one-bath house.
The Nuts and Bolts of Assessments and Appeals
Here is a primer on tax assessment appeals:
Definitions
An assessment is not an appraisal and it's not a tax bill.
It is a government's evaluation of the fair market value of a property on a certain date. The fair market value is defined as the price that the property would bring when offered for sale by an owner who is not forced to sell.
An assessment is a mass valuation of many properties. The assessors analyze the data to determine values for large groups of similar properties. In other words, it is not a house-by-house process. The assessor has not inspected your house; he has not even visited your block. Inevitably, that means that some assessments can be wrong.
An appraisal is a detailed valuation of a single property. Appraisals are used for a variety of reasons: to obtain mortgages and home equity loans and to price houses for sale or as estates.
Translating Assessments Into Taxes
Local governments figure tax bills by multiplying the assessment by the tax rate, set by the elected officials in each city or county. The tax rate is usually stated in dollars or cents per $100 of assessed value.
A county can keep tax bills more or less equal from year to year by lowering the tax rate if the assessments go up, as some local jurisdictions have done in recent years.
But debate has generally revolved around whether the boom in housing that has pushed prices, assessments and taxes up has also generated new pressures for schools and other public services that aren't being met by the taxes being levied.
Assessment Cycle
Not every property is reassessed each year. Maryland assesses a third of the properties in each county every year, in a triennial cycle. The increases are phased in over the three years, with the amount of increase capped at 10 percent per year, depending on the location.
The District and most Virginia counties in the Washington area assess annually. Fauquier County reassesses every four years.
Deadlines
For residents of Maryland and Arlington, the clock is already ticking on appeals.
Maryland assessment notices went out to one-third of all property owners, about 692,000 owners, on Dec. 30. Those owners have until Feb. 14 to appeal with the local tax assessor's office.
If the local office determines the assessment was in error, the homeowner will get a revised assessment about a month later.
Homeowners then get 30 days to appeal the revised assessment to county property tax appeals boards, made up of three local residents and an alternate appointed by the governor for five-year terms. Those who are still not satisfied have another month to appeal to the Maryland Tax Court.
In Virginia, homeowners can appeal to either the local assessment office or the local Board of Equalization, groups appointed by officials in each county. The boards generally have later deadlines for appeals than the local assessors. If not satisfied, the homeowner can go to the Circuit Court.
In the District, homeowners appeal first to the assessor assigned to the property. If the assessor's decision does not satisfy the owner, he or she has 30 days from the date of notice of final determination from the first level to appeal to the Board of Real Property Assessment and Appeals.
A property owner can then appeal to the District's Superior Court.
Resources
While commercial property owners typically hire lawyers to represent them in appeals, homeowners generally don't spend that kind of money on challenges that might return just hundreds of dollars or less in reduced taxes. So homeowners have to educate and represent themselves.
For starters, those interested in appealing can check most county Web sites, which offer a basic rundown of how their appeals process works.
The National Taxpayers Union offers a guide, "How to Fight Property Taxes," for $6.95 (see www.ntu.org).
Another popular guide is James E.A. Lumley's "Challenge Your Taxes: Homeowner's Guide to Reducing Your Property Taxes" (John Wiley & Sons, 1998, $19.95).
Local taxpayers associations also offer advice. Among them are the Arlington County Taxpayers Association, 703-351-9300, www.acta.us; the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance, 703-642-5567, www.fcta.org; the Maryland Taxpayers Association Inc., www.mdtaxes.org; and the Montgomery County Taxpayers League, 301-946-3799.
-- Sandra Fleishman
|
| |
|
He eventually appealed his assessment to the Board of Equalization, the appointed board that reviews assessment office decisions, but lost.
Warren and other members of the Arlington County Taxpayers Association then joined with commercial property owners to challenge the process and to seek legislative changes. The state law was subsequently changed, and, effective in 2004, the process became "less onerous for the homeowner," Warren said.
He said that a new state requirement that 30 percent of the members of each county's Board of Equalization have to be real estate professionals "has led to a more professional attitude at the [Arlington County] board, more educated discussion about the cases and more votes to give property owners a substantial reduction."
He still complains that county officials don't make it easy to get the worksheet. "You have to ask for it. And if you do ask, you will get a runaround."
Arlington County officials said homeowners can look at a basic analysis on the Internet and then request their worksheet by e-mail or telephone.
"We mail them out daily," county assessor Thomas L. Rice said.. Of Warren, Rice said: "What he wanted, I believe, were the worksheets on a lot of other properties as well. And we said you can come to the office and examine them."
Rice said that assessors want to know about discrepancies between their data and reality. In some cases, he said, the assessor might not know about damages or about defects in the county's basic information because no one has questioned the assessment over the years.
And, sometimes, he said, different homeowners interpret questions about their homes differently.
"Someone may have gone to the house and asked, 'Do you have a finished basement?' and the homeowner might have said, 'Yes,' " Rice said. "But there are all sorts of degrees of finished basements. The house we bought, the owners said it had a finished basement, and all it had was a resilient tile over the concrete floor."
But in other houses, where the assessments should be higher, a basement can be finished as elaborately as the rest of the house, he said.
Assessors want to know not only the inside details but also the outside story, he added. If, for instance, a house over time had been surrounded by new development and suffered water damage from runoff as a result, "we would come out and take a look at it and try to determine how that would affect the value of the property," Rice said.
Maryland doesn't have county boards of equalization. A Maryland property owner who doesn't get satisfaction at the local level can go to the state's Property Tax Assessment Appeals Board.
The state board considers appeals based on "functional obsolescence," where a house has lost value because something's broken or not up to the standards of the day, board administrator Ronald L. Bowers said. And "we're also interested in those based on 'economic obsolescence,' " such as properties that have lost value because of airport noise or the widening of a major road.
But, Bowers said, the homeowner "still has the burden of proof in demonstrating that the decision of the [local assessment] supervisor was wrong."
Local officials across the area say that they wish homeowners would keep the rapidly rising assessments in perspective. They're not making the numbers up, they say, they're just tracking a very hot market. Most of the time, they add, they won't ever catch up to the actual value.
"Typically in the type of market we're in, values are going up so quickly that by the time we get the assessments out they look conservative," said William Gardner, Loudoun County assessor.
Gardner and others also say homeowners need to keep the bottom line in mind as they tally up whether to appeal.
If a house rose $100,000 in value last year, he says, his county's tax rate of $1 per $100 would add $1,000 to the tax bill. That's nothing to laugh at, he noted, but if homeowners think the county is off by a few thousand or so, he suggests that they might want to consider how much time they want to invest in an appeal.
"We have to chuckle, occasionally, when people are spending all sorts of time and energy on an appeal over a $5,000 difference" in value, Gardner said. "Occasionally we'll ask that person: 'Do you realize that that's only $50 in [extra taxes] you're talking about?' and they'll say, 'Oh, you're right.' "
