City Bracing For Flood Of Tax Appeals
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Nearly 2,400 tax abatements were filed this year, almost half of which were approved by City Assessor William Ford and his staff.
Ford said that his office did receive additional abatement applications, but they were all late filings received after the late June deadline. The City had 90 days, plus an additional 10 days under state law, to review and decide on the applications.
Filing With The Appellate Tax Board
Now that the City has worked through all the abatement filings and issued its approvals or denials, said Ford, property owners have 90 days to file with the state's Appellate Tax Board (ATB) if they still have issues with their final assessments.
The ATB is authorized by the Commonwealth to hold hearings and issue decisions on appeals for all state and local taxes, from property and real estate taxes to the sales taxes.
Filing with the board carries a fee that ranges from $10.00 for all property assessed at $20,000 or less to $100.00 for property with an assessed value between $100,000 and $1,000,00. Properties with assessed valuations in excess of $1,000,000 face a filing fee of $0.10 per $1,000 of assessed value with a minimum fee of $65.00 but not to exceed $5,000.
"I hate to see those people move forward with what they got assessed at," said Bill Breault, who sits on the Board of Directors at the Main South Community Development Corporation.
"I believe a lot of the businesses lawyered up, and they'll go to the state appellate board with theirs."
Some Worcester property owners have already begun the process.
George Valeri owns a commercial building at 26 Cambridge Street, which is home to a window company, an automotive repair company and a towing company. Valeri said the property's assessed value increased from $423,000 to $756,000 this year. An abatement later reduced the valuation by $30,000, but that was still too high for the property owner.
"It wasn't what I was looking for," said Valeri, the secretary of the Worcester Property Owners Association.
"If you do an income and expense analysis, it shows a value of about $300,000, and that's done by a third-party."
Valeri, who said he would be happy if his property was just returned to its old valuation, will not be hiring a lawyer and will instead represent himself for the ATB proceedings.
"This is nothing personal," he said. "It's survival."
Small Businesses Hit Hardest
Bill Vernon, the state director in Massachusetts for the National Federation of Independent Business, said the Commonwealth's dual tax rates for commercial and residential properties, first instituted through a ballot measure in the 1970s, already place an added burden on commercial property owners.
"When the valuation is off, that exacerbates the problem."
Worcester's fiscal year 2012 residential tax rate is $16.98 per $1,000 of assessed value. The city's commercial tax rate is $29.07 per $1,000 assessed valuation.
"Compared to some of their counterparts, it is lower," said Vernon.
In cities such as Lawrence and Holyoke, the commercial property tax rate is more than double the rate for residential properties.
Even though Worcester's commercial tax rate is on the low end of the spectrum, it still can take a toll on small businesses, especially if they see their property's valuation nearly double.
"What they're trying to do, frankly, is turn the property tax into an income tax," Vernon said.
But that plan can end up backfiring when the income generated by the commercial property cannot keep pace with its rising tax bill.
"What you get is less commercial property and less jobs and less economic activity."
Related Articles
- 2400 Property Owners File For Tax Abatements
- Worcester Could Face Flood of Abatement Requests After Tax Bills
- Worcester’s Contentious Tax Debate
- Small Businesses Crippled by the Abatement Process
- NEW: Help for Small Businesses Struggling with Abatements
- Will You File an Abatement?
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Comments:
Stephen Quist
8:07am on Tuesday, October 09, 2012
Way past time to get an actual Assessor that is independent and unbiased who doesn't give himself a $350,000+ reduction in his own property valuation while every other property owner in the city is seeing their property taxes rise expotentially..........something smells rotten in Denmark
Edward Saucier
3:55pm on Tuesday, October 09, 2012
According to the T&G roughly 46 percent of the real estate abatement applications filed for last fiscal year ended up being approved by city assessors. So what about the other 54%? Maybe they are overwhelmed by the rules?
According to the Appellate Tax Board, taxpayers who claim their assessed property valuation is too high should be prepared to show that the fair market value of their property for last fiscal year is lower than the assessed value. Because the assessed value of properties assigned by assessors is presumed by law to be valid, taxpayers bear the burden of proving that their property is overvalued.
When the economy is bad and many people are looking for work, it is a pretty good time to screw the homeowners. When just about everyone gets a property value increase except for the guy who is the City Assessor who gets a property valuation decrease it smells like a real good scandel is in the making and a serious investigation is in order.
Check out the AWARE COALITION it has all the intel about this heaping helping of crap initiated by the City Assessor. The revolution has started.