From San Diego to Redding, from Crescent City to El Centro, county assessors are hoping that tax property payers are sleeping past the appeal filing dates. If they wake up, there could be big problems, and it's not just the lost revenues.
As an example, as of May 2008, the Los Angeles County Assessor’s office has a one year plus backup on hearing property tax appeals. Their effort to discourage appeals consists of announcing that 128,000 homeowners will receive reductions averaging $750per home due to property devaluations. Only problem is that the average home value in L.A. County dropped about 25% in the last tax year with an average loss over $150,000 per home. At the standard 1.25% average tax rate on assessed value the reduction should have been $1875 per home not $750. That’s a big difference. (See L.A. Times)
Every county assessor in California is looking at a potential roll back to 2004 or 2003 property values. This means the assessors are responsible for reassessing the property taxes on over 1,700,000 California homes. This task would require an additional work force of tens of thousands of additional employees to complete this task within the time limits. Their easy solution, throw the taxpayers a few crumbs and hope they don’t appeal.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
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