You may think that your accountant has all of your tax preparation needs covered for you. However, if you own your home, a boat, an airplane, or any other piece of large property that can be taxed, you may need to talk with someone who specializes in property taxes. Property tax consultants can help taxpayers in a number of ways.

Property taxes are onerous, difficult burdens to bear, particularly when you consider the number of other taxes you’re liable for during the course of just a single year. There’s good news, though. Many homeowners in the Metro Atlanta area are overpaying in property taxes due to inaccurate home assessments, missing exemptions and delayed assessments that don’t allow for market fluctuations. Appealing your tax assessment can help you save hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year. However, it’s best to go into the process with the help of an experienced tax consultant.

In the Atlanta Metropolitan area there are many property tax consulting firms. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, Georgia tax law does not require that the counties appraise all properties every year, and infrequent appraisals often resulted in large percentage increases in value. Also, the county tax assessors’ values were incorrect in many cases and unfair (inequitable) in others. When property owners get large increases in tax assessments and corresponding tax bills in general they are outraged and want to do something about it. That is why there are so many property tax consultants in the Atlanta Metro area.

As stated in Georgia law, before tax bills are released, all counties should have already issued an Annual Assessment Notice to all taxable real estate owners. This Tax Assessment Notice should be distributed April - June of each year.

The Hall County tax assessor sent out year 2013 property tax assessment notices on April 14. The appeal filing deadline for all counties in Georgia is now 45 days, so you have until May 27 to file a Hall County property tax appeal. A client of ours was thoroughly shocked when he got his 58% increase in Hall County, GA property tax assessment for tax year 2013. This was a community retail center, so it will be interesting to see if the Hall County tax assessor hit just certain property types, or whether many properties throughout Hall County, GA, were increased in value.

It is possible that the Hall County tax assessor is sticking it to commercial property owners and giving residential property owners a break. It has yet to be seen. During the recovery from the great recession the commercial real estate sector has been doing quite well, due to the low level of interest rates in the economy and institutional money seeking out higher rates of return with relative safety. Commercial real estate, especially the apartment sector has been especially desirable for institutional money and all commercial real estate capitalization rates have fallen since the height of the recession.

ATLANTA (MARCH 14, 2013) -- Companies and individuals thinking about filing a property tax appeal for 2013 are in luck.

Net operating income (NOI) is defined by the Appraisal Institute as "the actual or anticipated net income remaining after all operating expenses are deducted from from effective gross income, but before mortgage debt service and book depreciation are deducted."

Effective gross income (EGI) is "the anticipated income from all operations of the real property adjusted for vacancy and collection losses. This adjustment covers losses incurred due to unoccupied space, turnover, and nonpayment of rent by tenants." This definition refers to market estimates of gross income adjusted for market vacancy and market collection losses. Your actual income may be very different from the "market."

While preparing your property tax appeal you need to be aware of how the tax assessors generated your value. For residential property they have probably used a cost approach to value in combination with a sales comparison approach. For commercial properties they may use the cost approach, the sales comparison approach, and an income approach to valuation.

For residential properties, the tax assessors often use a cost approach on all properties. Then they compare their values generated with the cost approach to actual sales prices to determine whether their cost approach is low or high. Based on sales in your neighborhood the assessors will adjust their cost values up or down to get as close to market value (sales) as possible.

Unless you are real estate professional you probably don't have the expertise to do a cost approach on your property. The best approach is to look at sales within your neighborhood and compare them to the assessed value of your property. If the sale prices per square foot of building area are lower than your assessment per  foot of building area then you have a basis for a property tax appeal.

The same is true of commercial properties, but often an income approach to value is thrown in. Income approach is used on properties that are often rented, and that is true of most commercial property types. To do an income approach to value you need market rental rates, typical expense ratios, and a capitalization rate.

As a commercial property owner/operator you may have a firm grasp of what the market rent is for your property, in your market. You probably know what your expense ratio is as well, but you may not know if this is typical. Your Net Operating Income (NOI) needs to be capitalized into an estimate of value. Capitalization rates can be developed in a couple of ways, but deriving them from sales of similar properties is the best way to get them.

So those are basically the three things that you can argue that the assessor is wrong on. You can argue that the market rental rate is lower than what the assessor is using. You can argue that your property is unique in some way and will never have an expense ratio as low as what the assessor is using. You can also argue that the capitalization rate that the assessor is using is too low.

You can look online for rental rates and sales at a site like LoopNet and you can get expense ratio and capitalization rates at RealtyRates. If would like to put your property tax appeal on autopilot, contact the professionals at Fair Assessments LLC.