Tax Bill Appeals Take Rising Toll On Governments (really?)

Here's a story for you, alstrydomous:

Tax Bill Appeals Take Rising Toll On Governments

 

Quote:

The tax appeals and reassessments present a new budget nightmare for governments. In a survey conducted by the National Association of Counties, 76 percent of large counties said that falling property tax revenue was significantly affecting their budgets, said Jacqueline Byers, the association's research director.

Significantly affecting their budgets, eh? What ever will they do?

The pain at the state level is trickling down to county and local governments. To compensate, about 10 percent of large counties are raising the tax rates associated with home values to minimize the revenue loss, the county association said.

Hrmm, that sounds like sound fiscal management. I wonder if the administrators of those 10% have considered reducing the size/cost of their fiefdoms instead of putting their finger in the dike. Really, though, how bad can it be? There are green shoots everywhere, or so my tee-vee watching friends and relatives tell me. Let's see:

In suburban Atlanta, thousands of people lined up at government offices to file their requests for reassessments before a March 31 deadline. In parts of Ohio, appeals have multiplied fivefold. Tax lawyers in the northern suburbs of New York say they have never been so busy, and some towns have hired extra employees to sift through the paperwork and are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees to deal with the cases in tax courts.

Massive increases in board of appeals traffic. I wonder how much those towns spending hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting in tax court would lose if they simply adjusted values to match the market. 

All of which leads me to wonder, "Isn't the assessment supposed to be based on market value? If market value has declined, and we all know it has, then isn't fighting the downward adjustment tantamount to fraud on the part of the assessing authority?"  Did they have any problem raising assessments when the bubble was being inflated? Even though, I am sure, most assessors knew the underlying properties were not realistically appreciating at 20% per annum.

I think we are nearing the end of the beginning.