Almost done.
More than 51,000 taxpayers last year asked the city to review the property reassessments they got last spring, and as of last Friday, decisions had been made on more than 48,000 of those requests.
More than 37,000 owners’ requests were denied, according to Mike Piper, deputy chief assessment officer for the Office of Property Assessment. About 1,400 of those were sent in after last year’s deadline, he said.
About 10,000 owners did get the news they wanted, most of which was lowered assessments. Most of the successful appeals stemmed from owners asserting their assessments didn’t accurately reflect market values or weren’t uniform.
About 3,500 reviews haven’t been completed, Piper said Feb. 21. One of the reasons some aren’t done yet is just the large number of review requests. Another is that those not completed yet might require further inspections, he added.
The lifespan of an assessment is a year, but it’s not likely residential property owners will be reassessed this year. Piper said new construction will be assessed for the 2015 tax year as will some properties that have been modified.
Some of the 10,000 owners who were told their assessments would be revised down got 2014 tax bills based on the values assigned before the OPA made its decisions. The city’s Revenue Department mailed out the bills before hearing from OPA. Those people should get corrected bills, city officials have said, as well as a little leeway on taking advantage of the 1-percent discount taxpayers get if they send in their checks by Feb. 28. Those whose bills have to be revised will get the discount if they pay up by March 31, the deadline to file without penalty.
That’s all ongoing. Tax bills started going out in December. Ordinarily, property owners who don’t like their assessments take their beefs to the Board of Revision of Taxes. The first-level reviews were something new in 2013, a year that there was the first citywide reassessment in decades. Still, the BRT got 25,000 appeals, some from those dissatisfied with OPA decisions and some from those who went directly to the BRT.
The deadline for BRT appeals was early October. By earlier this month, the agency had disposed of 1,000. Not all were decided, according to Carla Pagan, the BRT’s executive director. Some were withdrawn, she said. ••
