When it comes to winning your Fulton County property tax appeal, you have to look beyond your frustration at the apparently unfair valuation of your property. You must gather valid, reasonable, and comprehensive evidence to support your claim that, indeed, your property’s assessed value, as reflected on the annual notice of assessment, is too high. Your tax consultant should be able to assist in gather your appeal-ready evidence but here are useful tips that you can also remember.
Things to Remember About the Evidence
In the Fulton County property tax appeal, the Board of Assessors (BOA) has the burden of proof. This means that the BOA has the obligation to prove the validity of its own assertions in order to defend their taxable value. Your tax consultant should have the knowledge to show the assessor’s value is questionable, at best.
Recent sales prices of comparable properties is always the best evidence. Comparable in terms of style, age, and quality of construction. Your best evidence will be sales of similar property with similar location. The tax assessors will have your property assigned to a neighborhood, and provided there are plenty of sales within this neighborhood, they will not accept sales from other neighborhoods. Your tax consultant should be able to gather evidence on comparable sales, which can boost your chances at a successful appeal.
You should have sales that support a lower value and that sold within one year of the assessor’s effective date of appraisal. This is January 1 of every year. If you are appealing a 2016 value the effective date of appraisal is 1/1/16. As a result you can only use market data (sales) from calendar year 2015. You should ideally have at least 3 comparable sales to back up your Fulton County property tax appeal – but, as your tax consultant may say, the more comparable sales you can submit, the more likely the Tax Assessor will accept your suggested valuation.
When appealing to the BOA you only need to provide one copy of your evidence. When you attend a Board of Equalization hearing you may be required to present 4 copies of the evidence, or 5 including a copy for yourself. You can include maps, photos, spreadsheets, graphs, comparable sale information sheets, just about anything that you think will help your case.
If you are overwhelmed by the process of gathering evidence, your tax consultant and their staff will take over the appeals process and get everything done for you. You can focus your time and energy on other matters and check in on the progress of the appeal when time permits. This can be a lengthy process because many counties get thousands of appeals each year.
Working Smarter
You probably know more about your neighborhood than even the most seasoned tax consultant. You probably know more than the tax assessor too. This means that if you are using a tax consultant you can easily inform them of adverse conditions inside and outside of your property to arm them with more information for your property tax appeal. Anything like busy road noise or poor grading/drainage issues should be brought to their attention.
Keep in mind, too, that gathering documentary evidence is not all there is to the appeals process. You must strive to be as courteous as possible toward the county’s staff, including the hearing officers and county appraisers. Your professional attitude will go a long way toward getting actual results in most situations where government agencies are concerned.
Last but not least, less can be more in the evidence you present. You should ensure that your evidence is presented in an efficient, effective and organized manner, which will facilitate a faster resolution of your Fulton County property tax appeal.
