Marny & nittygritty:

You guys are close, but not direct on target with your comments.It is important to understand the rules of engagement in this area. Let me take it point by point.

1. Discovery: the taxpayer "discovered" on the Town's website that the assessors' description of the property differed from the actual in terms of bedroom count & bathroom description. This data has been there for many years. It is the responsibilty of the taxpayer to verify the basic descriptive data on which the assessed value is based. It appears that this was not done for six years.

2. Refunds for back years: this is NOT allowed under state law. Once the deadline for abatement applications has passed, approximately feburary 1 in a quarterly tax community, the possibility of adjustment is gone. It cuts both ways: if the assessors discovered that the house had more (sq. ft., bathrooms, etc.) than they were using to base its assessed value, then they CANNOT go back in time and capture additional taxes.

3. A change of $40,000 most likely means that there was more to adjust than merely a bedroom count (no signficant impact on value) and a bathroom count (minor impact on value). Far more likely: building size, condition, story height.

4. market decline/revaluation: Since Fiscal Year 2005, all cities & towns are required by the DOR to adjust values ANNUALY. But please be aware, the next set of values for FY2010 (which started 7/1/2009), are based on the sales which took place during calendar year 2008. Got that?

So, a tax bill mailed at the end of December, 2009, is based on sales which took place 1-2 years prior. This is because the valuation date for FY2010 is January 1, 2009. Therefore, the sales review focuses on the prior calendar year, i.e, 2008.

5. Abatement Process: the time for filing an abatement application is after receipt of the third quarter tax bill, which is generally due for payment on February 1. This is known as the "actual" tax bill; the two bills due on August 1 (8/3 this year because the first is a Sat.) and Nov. 1 are "perliminary" bills.
If you filed now for FY2010, the applcation will have no standing, except in a very few cases. chapter 59 of the MGL is quire specific on this point.

6. money, budget, etc. This comment reflects the general misunderstanding of how the local property tax system works. The lowereing of one person's assessed value does not impact the Town's overall budget. Any abatement due from such a decision of the bd. of assessors is taken from a fund included in the budget for precisely that purpose.It is called the overley. (yes, I don't know why, either).

Well. that's one property. What if we adjusted ALL properties downward,
surely that would trash the property tax receipts to the Town? right? Well. no, it would not. What would happen is that the tax rate would increase, all other things being equal. And everyone would remain in the same relative position, and therefore so would their tax bills, and therefore so would the Town's revenues from property taxes.

Confirmation? check out the Town's tax rates during the bubble in RE prices.
Values went up while the the tax rate dropped over several years, BUT THE LEVY STEADILY INCREASED. You see, its the LEVY that drives the magnitude of tax bills. Conversely, declining values will yield increasing tax rates; BUT (here comes that big butt, follows me everywhere i go), IF THE LEVY GOES UP, SO WILL THE TAX BILLS. Period. Simple, right?

You can confirm all of the above, including those annoying statistics on the DOR website, at www.mass.gov.

nittygritty,

You are close here, but not quite there. The focus under Prop 2.5 is the LEVY.
there are four steps in arriving at the LEVY for a city/town.

1. Determine the overall budget  - i.e the vote @ town meeting

2. Calculate receipts from non-property tax sources. these include State aid, motor vehicle excise, and any enterprise funds. You know, like a sewer enterprise fund.

3 Subtract all receipts in Step 2 from Step 1. The result is the LEVY. In the old days, this was known as the Net Amount to be Raised by Taxation. The nomenclature changed after Prop 2.5.

It is the LEVY that is limited to a maximum change of 2.5 %. Well. sort of. This is where the new growth comes, as the levy can raise over the 2.5 % based on the amount of new growth a community has. When there is substantial construction activity, as has happened in this decade in Wareham, the levy could increase 5-6%, based on the allowable 2.5% PLUS new growth.
The levy can also increase over the 2.5% "limit" via overides, both permanent and temporary (debt exclusions).

4. Have we got a tax rate yet? The last step is to divide the Levy (from Step 3) by the total taxable value of the Town, to yield the tax rate. This is a fraction, then. the numerator is the LEVY. The demoninator is the taxable values. Changing the denominator in either direction does NOT change the numerator. And it is the LEVY in the numerator of the fraction that dtives the tax rate and the tax bills.

Now in the compilation of the values, the assessors MUST recognize differences in property classes (residential, commercial, industrial, personal); as well as differences WITHIN classes. So, if in the commercial class demand and prices and/or rentals for retail space is on the rise, yielding higher values; while demand and prices and/or rentals for office space is declining, yielding lower values, then the assessments MUST change to reflect this kind of market activity. It is the same in the residential class. These changes do NOT result in changes in the revenue to the town: they do, however, result in changes in the allocation of the tax burden among taxpayers.

These questions were all resolved in a series of legal actions in the late 1970's, including the passage of Prop 2.5. it is unfortunate that the rules of the road that evolved were poorly explained to the people who count the most, the property taxpayers. It is what it is.

Nittygritty, I hope that this helps. let me know. I can always fire off a few thousand well-chosen words (only kidding).

wow thanks for all the info guys

Bornofwareham...

Thank for the kind words. Please be assured, however, that I am "not a lawyer". Now, the thought was there in my mind when college graduation was approaching, but my father talked me out of it. His view of lawyers was Mr. V. in a dark, dingy office over the corner drugstore (remember those?) in the center of Town. Or, the incompentent Maalox swigging jerk across the street over the competing corner drugstore. Mr. Maalox screwed up my parent's estate beyond belief, which ultimately screwed me. Of course, he was made a judge!

but, I do regret not going to law school. the combination of my technical BS & a law school degree would have been very interesting.

So it is nice to have a child who DID go to law school and is working on large cases, such as Walmart's discrimination problem. It seemed that this child was heading for a career in journalism (no lie!), but decided to change after a few years. You know, journalists are held in such low esteem....
Wait! are journalists above or below lawyers on the scale of esteem rankings?

It is hard to believe that anyone, anywhere can claim a lower rung than the BoBomeister.