You will receive a letter in the mail regarding your property tax assessment, which lets you know how much you are supposed to pay. If you have owned property in the area for any length of time, then you have received these Gwinnett County property tax assessments before.
However, just how much time have you spent looking at those assessments to verify whether they were correct or not? If you are like many people out there, you really don’t think about them that much. Sure, you would like to pay less in taxes, but you just imagine that the assessment is correct. That might not be the case though.
When you look at your assessment, you want to determine whether it was correct and whether you are paying too much in your taxes. If you find that you might be paying too much, it can certainly be frustrating. However, it does not mean that you do not have any recourse. There are things that you can do that will help to ensure that you get your assessment corrected.
How Do the Errors Happen?
It is very important to remember that these types of errors with the Gwinnett County property tax are not rampant, but they do happen. They happen often because the tax assessor is simply not capable of getting out and visiting all of the homes they need to access. This means that they use what they call reasonable criteria to assign a value to the home, which will affect your taxes.
The elements that they are going to be looking for with the property for the assessment include the size of the land plot, the square footage of the home and other buildings that are on the land, the number of bathrooms that are included, whether there are pools, outbuildings, and other features, and whether the basement is finished.
In addition, they are going to look for something called comps, or comparable properties. These are properties that are similar to yours in all of the areas listed above. They will look at the assessment of those property and how much those properties sold for.
As you can imagine, even though they might be using the same criteria to assess all of the homes, this does not mean they are going to be accurate assessments. The Gwinnett County property tax assessor is not going to know all of the facts about your property that might not show up in those other areas. For example, they might not know that there has been damage to the property, which has lowered its condition.
In addition, they may have some information entirely wrong. There could be errors on documents, which incorrectly state the size of your property or the number of bedrooms that you have. This is information that they are not going to know, and you need to find it and bring it to their attention.
You are going to have 45 days from the time that you receive your assessment letter to file for a review and appeal if you think that the value of the home, and therefore the taxes, are incorrect.
What Should You Do?
You do not want to keep paying your taxes when they are too high, so you need to get in touch with the Gwinnett County property tax assessor’s office by following the information provided on your assessment form that they sent in the mail.
You should make sure that you have a substantial amount of evidence that will help to prove your case. There is no specific list of evidence that is required, but the more you have the better. Depending on the type of problems that you discovered with the assessment, such as the assessor believing that you have extra rooms, you will want to make sure that you have the correct type of evidence.
Some of the different types of evidence that you might want to gather include maps and surveys of the home, professional contractor reports, renders of the property, photos, and even your own comps. When it comes to the comps that you are getting for your evidence, you will want to make sure that you find properties that sold or were assessed during the same timeframe when the Gwinnett County property tax assessors valued your property.
When you provide them with plenty of data, it will make it easier for you to plead your case, and it tends to be more likely that you will have your tax assessment changed and lowered. Of course, that’s not always the case. In some instances, it can be more difficult to get the assessment changed, and you will need to file an appeal.
When the Assessed Value Is Too Low
If you find that they have valued your property too low, you might be thinking that you are lucky and that you will not have to pay as much in taxes. While that might be true, it does mean that when others look up the value of your property, when they want to buy, the assessed value is going to show up as being low. This means it will be more difficult for you to get the price that you really want and need for the property. Therefore, if you find that it is too low, be sure to challenge the assessment.
Get Help from the Professionals
You tend to get new tax assessments for your house every few years, so if you are paying too much now, it means you are going to be paying too much for quite a while. You want to take care of this issues sooner rather than later, and you need to make sure that you make the deadlines for your Gwinnett County property tax review and appeal. One of the best ways to do this is by getting in touch with the professionals at Fair Assessments, LLC. With decades of experience in this field, you can be sure that they will make it easy for you to deal with your assessments.
