LAST CHANCE
MONDAY’S THE DEADLINE TO APPEAL NEW COUNTY TAX ASSESSMENTS:
MEDIA » Outraged by the school tax bill? Monday is the last day for county property owners to appeal their 2022 tax assessments, the first to include new valuations from a court-ordered countywide reassessment.
School taxes account for more than half of most local property taxes.
In 2017, in response an assessment appeal case, the county Common Pleas Court ordered Delaware County Council to do a countywide reassessment, the first in nearly 20 years, to meet the uniformity standard in the Pennsylvania Constitution after it was shown some people were overpaying in real property taxes while other people were underpaying.
In 2020, Tyler Technologies was awarded the contract by Delaware County Council. They took a look at every property using a combination of property records and visual inspections to produce a valuation for the hundreds of thousands of properties in the county. The company also performed the only other county reassessment in 1999.
The reassessment was revenue neutral -some saw tax increases, while others remained the same or even saw decreases.
In many locations, commercial property and new construction dropped in the assessment, shifting more weight onto older homes, which may not have been sold in a number of years.
“It’s a burden. The increase this year is so significant that it is a pretty stressful financial burden,” Dann Furia told the Haverford School Board at its July meeting. He said the increase this year was $1,625 for his home which he has lived in for 13 years. His former tax was $6,700 and this year it jumped to $8,400.
Haverford School Board President Lawrence Feinberg said the district was not to blame and urged Furia and residents like him to appeal their assessment to the county.
In 2020, a number of school districts considered filing suit against the reassessment. Radnor School District noted that its “residential property owners’ burden would increase to 84.3% of the total real estate tax burden, which is a 4.5 percentage point increase and a 5.6% increase in and of their district’s residential property owners’ burden.”
In 2020, some municipalities and school districts filed appeals against a few specific property owners who saw their taxes drop. Officials hoped it would make the assessment fairer, but it did not.
Aware that as much as a third of property owners saw tax increases from reassessments, the county waived fees for appeals, according to Councilwoman Christine Reuther.
“It is important that anyone who believes their property’s revised valuation is incorrect to file an appeal. It is possible that the outside vendor didn’t have complete information for some properties, made a mathematical error or grouped a given property with an inappropriate group of neighboring properties when it looked at comparable sales data,” said Reuther. “We want everyone to be paying their fair share, and not a penny more, and we need property owners to help the county, local municipalities and school districts get it right.”
Reuther said the appeal form is easy to fill out and a lawyer is not necessary, though one can be helpful at the hearing to focus the Board of Assessment’s attention on relevant facts.
“The best advice I can offer is to get an appraiser who can provide a report and appear at the hearing. That is more helpful than anything and the cost of a residential appraisal will usually be offset by savings in the first year if the value is really too high,” Reuther wrote in an email.
The county is adding additional staff to make sure that every property owner has an opportunity to appeal their new assessment if they believe it is incorrect. As long as the form is submitted by the Aug. 2 deadline, supplemental information can be added later if the taxpayer does so at least 10 days before a hearing takes place.
“The goal of the court ordered reassessment was to more equitably distribute the tax burden based on July 1, 2019 property values. Under Pennsylvania law no taxing authority – neither the county nor local school boards – may increase the total amount of taxes collected through an assessment,” she said. “Individual assessments may change, however, as the value of individual properties rise or fall. The county council in 2017 (none of whom are still serving) hired Tyler Technologies to perform the updated assessment.”
Reuther said she expects a large number of people who saw their assessments and their school taxes go up will appeal.
She also noted those who saw them go down will not be complaining as they have been paying higher taxes than neighbors with comparably priced homes for several years.
“Now, with new assessments, people with comparably priced homes in the same school district should be paying the same amount of tax,” Reuther said. “I understand what a burden it is, especially for people on fixed incomes. Unfortunately, the state of Pennsylvania relies on property taxes to fund schools and local governments, so increasing costs and disproportionate increases in housing values hit people hard when a court orders a reassessment.”
After the new assessments from Tyler Technologies came in, the county solicitor engaged an expert to review their work to make sure that it met the contractual standard for uniformity. However, the assessor’s office did not check all of the numbers individually as it doesn’t have the capacity to do that. They did address errors that arose from incorrect parcel numbers and property descriptions as they are brought to the county’s attention.
Those who want to appeal their property tax assessment need to submit the appeal form by 4 p.m. on Monday. Go to https://delcopa.gov/treasurer/boa.html and scroll down to the link to the 2022 appeals form. If you do not have access to the Internet or a printer, you can pick up a copy of the form at the county Assessor’s Office at the Government Center Building in Media or call the Assessor’s Office at 610-891-5127.
To see assessments for all county properties go to: https://www.delcopa.gov/treasurer/