Tuesday, February 2, 2010

OVERALL TOWNSHIP PROPERTY ASSESSMENT DROPS 13.2%

As a result of the recent Township Committee mandated property re-assessment, the total value of all property across Washington Township DECLINED by 13.2% from $3,248,332,329 down to 2,820,516,022. The next question many will ask is what this mean in terms of MY property taxes?  To answer this question, I have created a simple MS Excel tool you can download and use to see the impact based on your assessment. Just enter the old and new assessment for your home and it will tell you the change in your property taxes per this year's tax rate. Once the new tax rate is determined in the July, your taxes will increase based on the 2010 budgets passed by the schools, township, and county. 

If anyone has any questions, post them here and I will answer for the benefit of everyone.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Kevin,
    Interesting comment, but being a guy who likes numbers something seems strange. Maybe that is point you are trying to make.... pls read on.

    So tell me what am I missing from this high level view? For example, to make things simple, if the town budget is fixed at say $40M and our total property value is $2B that implies our tax rate would be $0.02 per assessed dollar (ie $40M/$2B). If my house were $500K, I would pay $10,000 in taxes.
    Now the budget does not change due to re-assessement so still $40M, but if property assessement drop by 10% (making it easy) our tax rate would need to increase, but our net payment should be the same. Ex: $40M/$1.8B = $0.02222). Now the big IF... If my property equally dropped by the corresponding 10% I will pay exactly the same amount of NET tax $450K x $0.02222 = $10,000. Bottom line the total taxed paid by Long Valley will be the same.
    So yes it looks like a tax increase, but only in percentage only, not real dollars.

    So going back to the BIG IF... if my house "decreases" less then someone elses then my tax burden would increase while someone else would decrease.... To me the point here is it sounds like yet another re-distribution of tax burden. I know there was a big up roar with the prior re-assessment where many people had huge increases... Is this just a disguise to appease those masses? In this re-assessment, my house only decreased about 7% so I guess I will again get hit by higher taxes, so much for my short lived reprive... surpised on how this changes in only 12 months... I guess some of Long Valley will benefit...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bob,

    Thanks for your comments, which are spot on. You hit the nail on the head by realizing if your property assessment declines less than the township as a whole, your share of the tax load will go up. Because as you noted, the pie isn't getting bigger; only the size of the slices are changing.

    But I have to ask…I guess “Lower Taxes Now!!!” isn’t working for you, huh?

    ReplyDelete

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