Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I've been reading the LI forum for the past few weeks and am amazed at all the knowlegeable people on here. This is my first post on this forum.
Today I went onto mynassauproperty.com to challenge my assessment for 2010/2011. To my amazement, my assessment went down approx 90K. So my question is, does that mean that my taxes will go down too?
I have been living in North Wantagh since '05, bought at the peak of the market and my taxes have gone up over 3k in 3 years. I'm hoping they may be reduced now, maybe I'm asking for too much, LOL.
for example a house that im looking at, the assessment is 26,500. obviously thats not the market value, and i think i found that town of islip assesses at 9.14% or something like that, thats where that number came from.
so if they didnt change that percentage, then i would think your taxes would go down if your assessment did
Having your assessment go down does not mean your taxes will decline (nor does your assessment going up mean your taxes will go up during times when values are increasing).
What generally decides the taxes is what the taxing jurisdiction decides to do with taxes and then how your change in assessment compares with the change in assessment with the jurisdiction as a whole.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I assume living in North Wantagh your three main taxing jurisdictions are Nassau County, Town of Hempstead and the Levittown School district (which has the highest school taxes on LI).
First off Nassau County taxes. Nassau hasn't raised taxes in 6 years, which is generally something that surprises most people. Some differences may have occurred from year to year, but that generally has had to do with changes in assessment and how it has compared to others. Some have seen increases, some have seen decreases, but the overall property taxes collected by the county have been the same since 03.
So the first thing would be to see what Nassau County does with the taxes. If no increase comes from the county level, any change in your taxes will be determined by how your change in assessment compares to the county average. If the decrease in your assessment was larger than the county average you will indeed likely see a decrease in your county taxes, however if your home decreased less than the county average, you would likely see an increase. Of course if the county decides to raise taxes, it is different. Now lets say they decide to raise it by 4%, it doesn't mean your taxes wil go up by 4% either. The assessment change basically will cover how that 4% change will be made up. Some will see an increase of greater than 4%, others might see right around a 4% increase, some will see an increase of less than 4%, perhaps some could even still see a decrease (if your change in assessment really exceeded the average change in assessment).
The same will hold true for the other jurisdictions. First its decided by what the particular jurisdiction is deciding to do with the taxes itself, and then the assessment is used to base how those taxes are split between the residents of the jurisdiction. If your home declined by more than the average home in the jurisdiction and if the jurisdiction held the line on taxes you will see a decrease in your taxes, if the jurisdiction raised taxes your increase will be less than others in that jurisdiction (or perhaps even a slight decrease depending how much greater your decrease was) and if the jurisdiction decided to (gasp) lower taxes, your decrease in taxes would be even larger than the average in the jurisdiction. The flip side of this is obviously if your home decreased by less than the jurisdiction average drop than the opposite will be true.
Regardless, it will probably be unlikely to see your taxes decline, mostly due to school taxes (which make up 2/3 of your taxes anyway) pretty much go up every year.
On top of that there are also other factors which could determine the taxes (both good and bad). The current economic problems of the state may wind up causing cuts in school aid from the state level, which would cause a greater onus on the local taxpayer. On the flip side of that, two of the biggest reasons due to the increase in school taxes has been result of federal funds not being delivered for NCLB as well as they huge increase in health care costs. Fully funding NCLB gets some more federal $$ into the school, which could take some of the onus off the local taxpayer and a national health care plan would likely help reduce the stratosphere increases in health care costs in the school districts. All of these are all potential unknowns which could impact property taxes in both a positive and negative way (or perhaps even cancel each other out)
Thanks so much for the detailed reply. You are correct that I am in the Levittown School District and the taxes are extremely high. As I am only a Nassau County resident for 3 years, this is all still new to me. I appreciate your help.
Thanks so much for the detailed reply. You are correct that I am in the Levittown School District and the taxes are extremely high. As I am only a Nassau County resident for 3 years, this is all still new to me. I appreciate your help.
Not a problem, the whole assessment system is something that many long time residents don't understand due to it being fairly complex. Some people trying to play off the misconceptions of the whole assessment system haven't helped the understanding of it either. The whole system was changed a little less than 10 years ago as a result of a court ruling due to homes in certain areas being assessed at a similar or even higher amount than homes in other areas even though the true value was less and in some cases far less.
As far as Levittown goes, it gets hit hard in taxes due to it having a small commercial base for a district of its size, and virtually no upper end properties to speak of in order to help alleviate the school taxes from the middle class resident.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
