2022 will be a busy property tax year for Niles Township.
The County will reassess Niles Township in 2022. We call the value the County assigns to a property the stated value. We could see significant stated value increases in 2022. Remember though, that whether or not an increase in value results in a tax bill increase is a matter of how that value compares to the values of other area properties. We will have information about the 2022 reassessment and appeals in a future newsletter.
In this newsletter I want to address tardy exemptions, refunds and the re-tax law.
Tardy Exemptions
Homeowner and Senior Citizen Exemptions are supposed to roll over automatically from one year to the next. For whatever reason, the rollover does not always work well and exemptions that were supposed to roll over get dropped without notice.
Unfortunately, the taxpayer will not find out about a dropped exemption until the 2nd Installment property tax bill is mailed out in July. At that point it is too late to include the exemption amount in the tax rate math and we therefore have a tardy exemption. We at the Niles Township Assessor office can order an amended tax bill or file a certificate of error and get a refund for the tax payer. However, fixing a tardy exemption after the exemption has been dropped does not fix the big picture problem.
A tax bill is based upon the stated value of the property (as modified) multiplied by a tax rate. Divide the total of the levies within a tax district by the total of the property values within the same tax district to figure the tax rate. Once this math is done the tax rate is created and all of the tax bills within the tax district can be printed and mailed.
The problem is that the dollar values of tardy exemptions are not included in the calculation of the tax rate.
Refunds
The dollar amount of a tardy exemption is given or returned to the taxpayer but it is deducted from each taxing agency’s then current tax receipts. The taxing agencies say “hey – we are paying these tardy exemptions out of current tax revenues. The refund amounts were not included in calculating the tax rate and it’s not our fault there is a tardy exemption and we have not been given the opportunity to somehow recover the amount that we are refunding out today. In essence these refunds are an unknown and unplanned expense charged against our budget.”
The Re-Tax Law
The new law now allows the taxing agencies to re-tax, in future years, those tardy exemption refund amounts. This re-tax law also applies to PTAB refunds, which can be significant and which can come four years after the tax year. I have no idea how much the re-tax amounts might be but I do know that there are a lot of tardy exemptions out there.
To reduce the impact of the re-tax law we need to get away from relying on amended tax bills and certificates of error. To do so we need to avoid having tardy exemptions in the first place.
We are asking everyone who has had any kind of 2020 or 2021 deed activity such as adding an owner, removing an owner, death of an owner, transfer to a trust, a refinance, or who received a certificate of error or an amended bill for tax year 2020, to contact us at the proper time to apply for or confirm exemptions. When it is the proper time to begin processing the 2021 (remember – the tax year is one year behind the calendar year) exemptions we will send an email to our email notification list.
Our email list is the only way you can make sure to receive information such as appeal dates and procedures, exemption dates and procedures, and other property tax related advice and counsel. Interested people may register for the email notification list at NilesTownshipAssessor.com
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NilesTownshipAssessor.com
Scott Bagnall, Niles Township Assessor