In regard to Florida property tax assessment, all real and personal property in Florida and all personal property belonging to residents of Florida is subject to local property taxes, unless the property is specifically exempted. Property is assessed for each calendar year according to its value on January 1. The state is prohibited from imposing a property tax on real estate or tangible personal property. However the state does impose a property tax on intangibles. Real property is defined as land, buildings, fixtures and all other improvements to land.

Florida property tax assessment law requires that property is assessed at its just valuation, which is determined by considering the property's present cash value, highest and best use, location, size, cost, including the present replacement value of any the improvements, condition, and income, as well as the net proceeds of the sale of the property, after deduction of all reasonable fees and costs and allowing for unconventional financing arrangements. A County appraiser is required to physically inspect all property every five years, although the owner or taxpayer may request an earlier inspection.

You still have approximately three weeks to appeal your DeKalb County tax assessment. The dealine to appeal is July 13 for most county tax payers. After DeKalb County's recognition that some of the tax assessments that were sent out were erroneous they said they would send out second notices on up to 4,000 homes. These corrective notices should have another 45 day appeal period from the date of notice. If you get a second notice and you do not have 45 days to appeal I would like to hear about it. 

Some home owners are complaining that their DeKalb County tax assessment is now too low. I know that the assessment on my house is below market value but I'm not complaining. I figure the County will increase my value in 2013 or 2014 or whenever they think they have enough market data to increase it. It is the people that are trying to sell their real estate that are the loudest about low DeKalb County tax assessments. Although home buyers should put little faith in the tax assessment they often do. Because I am not ready to sell I will keep my mouth shut and enjoy the smaller tax bill.

There is still time to send in a property tax assessment appeal to the Atlanta GA Tax Assessor. The 2012 appeal deadline is June 28 and there is no provision in the Georgia tax law for relief if you fail to appeal within the designated appeal period. You get 45 days from the date of notice, no ifs ands or buts. 

There is still time to appeal your valuation notice from the Fulton Tax Assessors. The deadline to appeal is June 28. The Fulton tax assessors usually receive more property tax appeals than any other county in the Atlanta metropolitan area. They are currently still working on their 2011 appeals as well as court cases from prior years. There is hope that they will get to their 2012 assessment appeals sometime soon so that this property tax appeal season doesn't drag on well into 2013.

As a former manager for the Fulton Tax Assessors, I know about the volume of appeals they get. Every appeal form or letter is put into a separate file for every real estate parcel appealed. Each appeal is logged into the computer system. This process, by itself, is very time-consuming. With a large number of appeals being filed in the last week, you can bet that many of the appeal folders that are given to the appropriate appraiser won't even be completed until the end of July. If you try to talk to the appropriate appraiser about your property tax appeal they may tell you that they don't have the appropriate file to work with you.

The DeKalb County tax assessment notices are out and dated May 29, 2012. The deadline to appeal your 2012 value is July 13, 2012. The tax amount at the bottom of the notice is an estimate based on the 2011 tax rate and is subject to change. The DeKalb County tax assessment notice, as is the case with all Georgia assessment notices, is not a bill.

Wow. Just like last year, there are some wild and wacky value changes in DeKalb County tax assessments. Values dropped almost 50% on my street. Across the way values declined 17%, and just south 1/2 mile values were increased approximately 20%. A similar situation was seen last year at this time. Check that blog post here. Although the DeKalb County budget is in disaray it would be nice at some point if the DeKalb County tax assessment department gave us the sales information that they are using.

There is just over a week remaining to appeal your commercial Cobb County property tax assessments. The Cobb County property tax assessors took the first opportunity to increase values in several years to heart and jacked up a lot of commercial values. I have filed appeals on commercial values that have increases as high as 115%!

Most commercial property owners will say that we are still in recession, but not the Cobb County property tax assessors. I have clients that are teetering on the edge of insolvency but everything is looking up at 736 Whitlock Avenue! Maybe they haven't noticed that vacancy rates haven't improved. Maybe they haven't heard that tenants can still demand lower rent payments on the legitimate threat of moving to a lower cost building.

 DeKalb County tax assessments will be mailed on May 29th according to a report by the AJC. This will make the tax assessment appeal deadline July 13th. The DeKalb County Tax Assessment office reports that values (assessments) dropped six percent for the 2012 tax year. There continues to be value weakness throughout the Atlanta metro area. 

The DeKalb County Board of Equalization (BOE) continues to struggle under the weight of the 2011 tax assessment appeals that are still unresolved. I was just engaged to do a hearing on June 6 for a homeowner that cannot attend their 2011 hearing. Anyone of right mind would not want to attend one of these hearings as it is first come, first served, and too many hearings are scheduled for each morning or afternoon.

Fulton County Tax Assessors have released the dogs, I mean the 2012 property tax assessment notices. All that I have seen were dated yesterday May 14 and have an appeal deadline of June 28. There isn't a big rush to get these filed as the Fulton Tax Assessor staff is busy working 2011 tax appeal hearings at the Fulton County Board of Equalization.

The Fulton County Board of Equalization (BOE) is always inundated with appeals every year as it can be difficult to get substantial relief from the Tax Assessor's staff. In addition, many people (inluding myself) prefer to have our appeals settled at the Fulton County Board of Equalization due to the property tax law known as 299C. This is a section of the Georgia property tax law that states if your appeal is settled at the BOE or Superior Court, the value should be frozen for three years, unless you change the property or file a return at a different value.

The Georgia property tax assessment season is now well under way with many metro Atlanta county tax assessment notices already out. First out of the gate was Gwinnett County with an appeal deadline of May 21. Next came Cobb County with an appeal deadline of June 4. Last week Hall County mailed tax assessment notices with a deadline of June 11. Fulton County is expected to mail notices some time this month, as is DeKalb County.

The Cobb County Tax assessment notices were mailed on Friday, April 20 with an appeal deadline of June 4, 2012. My first phone calls were from commercial property owners that had large increases in assessed values. I was told by the County that the values are based on a new revaluation by the Cobb County tax assessment office. They said that they haven't had a revaluation since 2008 because the Georgia General Assembly placed a three year moratorium on assessment increases.

A commercial appraiser from the Cobb County tax assessment office told me that approximately 3,000 commercial properties received an increase in assessment, 8,000 received a decrease in assessment, and the remainder were unchanged. Some of these assessment increases will end up in court because the Cobb County Board of Equalization (BOE) rendered values on these properties last year, and according to Georgia Code 48-5-299C these values should be frozen for two additional years. However, the code does seem to give the assessors a way to change the values: