How to Pay Less Property Tax

photo credit: minneapolis

If the value of your property has fallen, you’d expect that your property tax bill might fall too, right? Unfortunately this is usually not automatically the case but it certainly pays to check into how much property tax you really should be paying, because you might end up saving up to 20%.

The trick with property tax is that it may only be assessed once every ten years, or in some cases, like in California, it’s based entirely on the amount you paid for the property when you first bought it. The good news is you have a right to check out how your house was valued and what other similar properties are paying in property tax and then you can appeal for a reduction in your property tax. Common reasons for a reduction are that the valuation is based on false information (four bedrooms instead of three, for example) or because other similar homes have received a reduction.

Once you’re armed with information, it’s just a matter of writing to the local assessors’ board, or sometimes appealing to the local property tax board. It’s often worth the effort because statistics show about half of those who try get a reduced tax payment and it’s usually between ten and twenty per cent lower.

Tags: Property | Tax