“Property tax appeals on fast track” plus 1 more |
| Property tax appeals on fast track Posted: 29 Aug 2010 02:02 AM PDT August 29, 2010 BY JAMES D. WOLF, POST-TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT Property tax appeals in Porter County never end, like Sisyphus pushing a boulder up a hill. Every year, more requests for reassessments and appeals come in, a change with the new trending method of determining property costs, County Assessor John R. Scott said. "You'll never, ever, ever catch up," he told the Porter County Council on Tuesday. However, he thinks the Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals will be able to clean up the backlog of appeals that go back to 2007. It will take at least 18 months, Scott said. There's also been a decline in the number of appeals with new state rules. Deputy Assessor Susanna Villarruel said there were 2,055 appeals in 2007, 1,614 in 2008 and 1,496 in 2009. However, Scott said, another reassessment is coming. To help catch up the work, the council on Tuesday gave the assessor's office another $7,500 for overtime pay. The council had given the assessor's office that same amount for overtime earlier this summer. That is speeding up the process, and people are entering data into the computers, Scott said. However, the most cases the Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals can hear in a day is 50, he said. The office now has two hearing officers concentrating on the more complicated commercial appeals. Villarruel said the office is also trying to consolidate appeals on the same properties when the owners file an appeal while waiting for a previous one. The owners want the appeal to take effect all years. That way, they can handle all the appeals at once, she said. People can also appeal to the state if the Property Tax Assessment Board of Appeals does not hear a case in 180 days. The state tends to be more strict and less willing to talk, and people do not like to go there, Scott said. Despite this, some people who have challenged their taxes received letters from the county saying their property is going up for this fall's tax sale. County Auditor Jim Kopp and County Treasurer Mike Bucko said those should have been caught by the system. Anyone wrongly receiving a tax sale letter should go to the treasurer's office, Bucko said. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Posted: 28 Aug 2010 11:41 PM PDT For the second year in a row, the Cole County Commission reduced the property tax levy for the general fund. On Thursday, commissioners approved a rate of 11.76 cents for each $100 of assessed property value. This is a 66 percent reduction from the 33.47-cent rate in 2008, or more than $2.8 million in lowered property taxes. Read the full article in our newspaper or e-Edition for Friday, Aug. 27, 2010.  This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Yahoo! News Search Results for property tax To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 comments:
Post a Comment