Do You Need to Appeal Your Fulton County Property Tax

Posted by Daniel Jones on May 21, 2018 6:51:00 PM

Fulton_County_Tax_AssessorsYou are like most people out there, you are not overly thrilled about paying property taxes, even though you know it is necessary. You get your tax bill, and you pay it, and maybe you do not even think to really look at the assessment letter and the bill to see if it is correct. If you aren’t checking the tax assessment closely, you might be paying more on your property taxes than you should be.

The assessor’s office strives to make sure their reports are accurate, but that’s just not always possible. Therefore, you need to make sure that you are double-checking the work of the Fulton County property tax assessor for the good of your own finances.

There could be mistakes due to a range of different elements. For example, there are many areas that will assess a large group of properties at once rather than individually. This means there could be some errors on the overall value of some of those properties. In some cases, they might not have the most current information on the house, or the information that they have might have been incorrect in the first place. If the Fulton County property tax office has the wrong information, there is no way that they can provide you with an accurate assessment.

If you believe that your property taxes are incorrect, you do not want to ignore the problem. It is not going to fix itself. Instead, you are going to need to check the assessment, look for the errors and then request a review and even an appeal. This will ensure that you are paying the correct amount on your property taxes.

What Does the Assessment Letter Say?

If you feel that your Fulton County property tax is incorrect, you will want to check your assessment letter more closely to see if there are any errors. Most of the time, when people get their letter in the mail, they do not look at it other than at the amount that they are going to have to pay. However, you need to look at all of the information on the letter to ensure that the office was using the correct information for the assessment.

For example, you need to see if they have the right number of rooms in the house, and that the house is the right size. There is a big difference between 1,250 square feet and 2,500 square feet, for example. Check to see that they have the condition of the property correct, as well.

Is the assessed value substantially different from what you are accustomed to paying or what you expected? Dig for the potential errors and see what you can find, and then make sure that you have the proof you need to show the assessors that their assessment was not correct.

Pay Attention to the Deadlines

There are deadlines that you are going to have to follow, as well. Once you receive your assessment letter, you will have a limited time to file for a review, just as you will have a limited time to file for your appeal if it is needed. Pay attention to those deadlines, and make sure that you have all of the information needed into the Fulton County property tax assessment office well before those deadlines. If you wait too long, you are going to be out of luck.

Look for Comps in Your Area

If you can’t find any obvious errors in your assessment, but they are still charging what you feel is too much for your taxes, you are going to need to make sure that you take the time to look at some comparable homes in your area that were for sale and sold during the time the county did their assessment. It is important that you look for comps during the time they did the assessment, and not current comps, because there are changes in the market value.

However, if you find that there are other homes that are very similar to your own that have vastly different values, it could be because they made a mistake with the assessment. This is something you are going to want to bring to their attention.

Get a Review

The assessment letter that you receive will provide you with information regarding how to go about filing a review with the tax assessor’s office. If you feel that the Fulton County property tax assessor was wrong with their initial assessment of your property, follow the instructions on your letter for your review.

When you have the review, and you present your evidence, according to the instructions, they might agree with you and make changes to your taxes at that point. This is the best-case scenario, and you might not have to go forward. However, they might not agree with you, and you might have to file an appeal.

Do You Need to File an Appeal?

If you do need to file an appeal because they valued your home incorrectly, you may want to get some help from a professional in the field who can make things quite a bit easier for you. Even though it might be possible to take care of the appeal on your own, it is going to be time-consuming and it can be confusing for those who have never had to do it before. You will generally be better off working with a professional, such as those at Fair Assessments, LLC.

They can provide you with a better understanding of whether appealing is worth your time, what you will need to do to appeal, what you can expect, and they can make sure that you make all of the deadlines on time.

If you have been paying too much for your Fulton County property taxes, then you will want to make sure that you have your taxes reviewed, and perhaps appealed if needed. This will help to keep your payments under control.

Resources: https://www.myajc.com/news/public-affairs/tips-for-winning-property-tax-appeals/2T9HRtMvg8siy6aqgTR8fN/

Topics: Fulton County Tax Assessor appeal

property tax appeals

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