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New law helps property owners dispute assessments
Until this was signed by Governor Charlie Crist, the prior law required Florida property owners to prove their tax assessment was wrong.
"This bill ensures that if a taxpayer can provide more convincing evidence than the property appraiser can, that the home will receive a modified, hopefully reduced, assessment," he said.
The governor says the law "puts fairness back on the side of Florida homeowners."
In 2007, records show that less than 10% of property owners disputing their tax assessment won their hearing.
That does not include Dade County which has a unique tax assessment dispute arrangement that resulted in 42% of petitioners winning their cases.
In Orange County that year, 8% of the assessments were successfully challenged. In Seminole County, it was 11%. In Osceola County a single property owner was able to change his tax assessment in 2007.
What others are saying
- property tax appeal reformsThe reason why taxpayers received more fair Value Adjustment Board hearing results is that Miami did not adopt its own local rules. Elsewhere attorneys to property appraisers, behind the scenes, have written local rules, not authorized by legislative delegation, and obviously favoring property appraisers, while the Department of Revenue made up an excuse to enable the ad hoc rules to be used. And special magistrates have not done independent investigations to understand and apply state standards of assessment. In addition, the Clerks and VAB members have "gone along". So in 2008 the Legislature adopted HB 909, following recommendations by the Auditor General, and when those reforms did not bring the VABs into compliance with state law, the Legislature went further in 2009 with the adoption of HB 521.
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