Oh I dread the tax bill! I am not sure how things are in other places but here in Texas the property tax is out of control.....beyond out of control. It is sick.

Kate - good luck with this and I sure hope you get all taken care of.

Kel

Nice to know they are so darn accurate huh!

I dread the tax adjustment.... we are building on the land we already live on- tearing down our old house once the new one is done. We have ridiculously cheap taxes for now... we are on CAUV ( agriculture- we have a farm). But now since the leaves are off the trees it's pretty clear we have two houses going on. The new house makes the old house look like it's a nursing baby. I just told the builder today I cannot wait to get done and get this old house out of here... the new house looks great and in proportion but the old house makes it look ginormous. Once the old house is down I don't think many people will even notice the difference- kind of like someone who gets a good nose job. You know something is a little different... just can't tell what. Hoping the tax assessor drives around a long time before finding us... LOL.

Good for you DH for taking it to them......

PD

I would very politely explain that you want your assessment corrected to match the actual circumstances, and that your next step, if this does not occur, is a personal letter to each person on the town council and to the mayor from your attorney documenting your problems. I would also suggest that you mention that you will also be contacting your local news stations to see if they would be interested in doing a story about unfair assessments based on speculative fantasy construction. There are all kinds of ways to get this problem addressed. You don't have to be nasty...just be persistent and give them a little wiggle room to save face.

One of my life-long gripes is that citizens who make mistakes are penalized. Typically the penalties are spelled out in some regulation. Make an error in filing your income tax return and see what happens. BUT let a government employee make a mistake and the penalty still falls on you. Correcting the error, if it is even possible, requires that the bulk of the effort be expended by you.

Yes, this sounds familiar. I have a 3798 sf house based on exterior measurements, counting walls and closets, not counting the second level of a room with a 2 story ceiling (air space). My charge for my building permit was based on that square footage, so at some point someone at town hall agreed with me. Our assessment says the house is about 4300 sf. How do they get to this amount? My best guess is that they didn't break the house down into small shapes, so they just took the width and depth and multiplied by two. They are also double counting my great room that has a 17' ceiling. They INSIST that the air space gets charged as square footage. I asked, "so, if someone built a 1000 sf ranch with 16' ceilings throughout, you would tax them as if they had a finished 2000 sf house?" The response? "Yes, we would". Arrgh! How do you deal with morons? We have spoken to assessors in other towns and they all say two story spaces are not double counted. The assessor refuses to correct it, even after I pointed out the building permit to her. I could challenge the assessment, but I am honestly afraid they will punish me and decide the house should be assessed higher for some other reason.

sounds like a drive by assessment. around here you can challenge the assessment anytime they do a new one. the county has me down as having 3 baths, when we only have 2, but correcting it would only mean maybe 20.00 difference in my tax per year. i ain't fighting it because they will see my shop is now finished off with AC instead of just a big storage shed, and raise it by 100.00 or more. BTW, my shop was done BEFORE permits were required in the county so they have no clue.

i would go to the assessor's office and get them to come do a full walk thru assessment. you may have to pay what they billed you this year, but from now on out it should be correct.

our office sits on 3 city lots. the first lot has the building, the second lot has the tower and a couple of sheds, the 3rd lot is just trees. we noticed a couple years ago that the city/county was sending us 2 tax bills. the first covered the building, lot 1 and lot 2. the second covered all 3 lots! they refused to credit us back for the 18 years we had been double paying, but they did fix it so tha tnow we pay correctly. at least it was only about 900.00 a year in double tax, in other areas of the country that could hav ebeen 30k or more per year!

Oh, sure, we'll have to have that corrected, at a major expense in time, serious aggravation, and tight-rope walking. *sigh* It's really just hilarious that they charged us for such an ENORMOUS completely non-existent entity.

They say that they did walk the construction site, and *proved* that their figure was right by pulling our page of stats (that they wrote) out of their binder and saying 'See? it says 3000 s.f. basement RIGHT HERE!' How can we fight such iron-clad proof?? good grief.

This is the same thing that happened with the septic designers: the excavators discovered that the septic field wouldn't even begin to fit in the area the designers had specified. We went to the designers, who pulled out a little hand-scratched sketch and said 'Look! it goes right here! There's plenty of room'.

Of course, that 'place' exists only on their little hand-drawn, not to scale, inaccurate sketch. oog. Soon to be over! (although, really, never over with the TaxMan!)

Invite the assessor to come to your house and show you this 3000 square foot basement. Tell him you can't seem to locate it.

Sue, our township does the same thing and we are in NJ. They count the square footage of a two story room twice, as though there were a second floor there. It is ridiculous. The explanation I was given was that the statutes were written before 2 story rooms were popular so there is no clear definition on how to measure them. So of course they count them twice since that way they can collect more in taxes.

C

I think Kudzu might be on the right track. I probably wouldn't bother with a call to the local media, but certainly town hall is a good place to start. These guys are the elected officials responsible for contracting the assessor. When the assessor runs afoul, it reflects poorly on them.

If someone tried pulling that 2-story ceiling double square footage thing on me, and I didn't get any help form the township officials, I'd be at the next meeting raising a stink.

Then again, we're rural around here. Things may be different where you folks are at. I suppose if it's documented in a local ordinance, your options are limited.

Can an assessor be sued by a homeowner? He's providing a service to the township under contract. Seems like this is not only a grievance on the part of the homeowner who will suffer undue expense, but also on the part of those who pay him to do a job (local taxpayers).