Luzerne County Reassessment Fair... NOT!

TimV wrote:Binghamton.....Someone should tell the NYS acessors that property vales have fallen like rocks and as such tax evaluations must also drop .If the law says they can go up it also has to say they have to go down....But dont hold your breath waiting for it to happen

Tim you don't need an accurate assessment for it to be fair as far as the taxes go, the only thing it has to be is comparable to other properties. If you have two indetical properties that are only worth $100K but are assessed at $200K they will still have an equal share in the tax. If every property is accurately assessed at 200% you'll have a fair burden of taxes for everyone. Don't look at assessment as what the property is actually worth but instead a measurement of its worth compared to your neighbor.

If they dropped all the property values they would just raise the millage and you'd still be in the same boat. For example all the properties here in Luzerne county were assessed at 1960's values, the millage was very high though. Now that they have raised the values they have had to drop the millage considerably. The total amount of property taxes collected will still be the same for the entire county however some will be paying more or less because some properties may be more or less valuable than they were in 1960 because of improvements or lack of.

I own 11 acres with my house on it. 10 acres is usually swamp, but right now the beavers have flooded it. I was warned by my lawyer and by the U.S.D.A. conservation officer not to tell them. The reason? The county would say I had waterfront property and RAISE my taxes even more. They did it to many people who had standing water on their property. I'm waiting for the dam to collapse and the water to drain so it will be a swamp again. When it's a swamp again I'll appeal.

"Waterfront" that's funny. There's a lake near here called Harvey's Lake. There is some pretty impressive homes on it and others are not much more than shacks. The trouble with a lot of these places is they were shacks 30 or 40 years ago and people just kept improving them over the years, some of them are just average people without a lot of money. With the new assessment their rates went through the roof between the improvements and water front. It's valuable property but these people are getting squeezed out because they cannot afford the new rates. Probably all be McMansions eventually as the properties get bought up by more wealthy people.

Just be glad that you don't live on Long Island. I regularly deliver there. When a discussion about taxes came up I thought the man was pulling my leg when he told me that his taxes where $14,000 a year. Yes that is fourteen thousand a year on a three bedroom 1.5 bath 125x 75' lot. built in the 50's. It did not take a whole lot of time to find out that he was telling the truth! That is an average for people out there. No wonder they are all leaving. $14,000 is a brand new car every year and taking last year's car and crushing it! Now this is hope and change that we can believe in.