Apparently, our Lewis County assessor hasn’t seen a newspaper, watched TV or spoken to a human being in two years.
I received our annual tax assessment yesterday. Our assessor doesn’t seem to know about the recent recession and hasn’t shopped in the grocery store or put gas in his car in at least two years. It seems he missed the part about 8% inflation and 7% mortgage rates. Nor does he seem to have noticed the decrease in home sales and sales amounts.
My property assessment went up nearly 20% this year. Two years ago, the Board of Equalization agreed with my property tax appeal and decreased our property assessment nearly $70,000. The assessor disagreed with the board and increased our property assessment 43% the following year. But he did file an appeal with the state tax board. Apparently, they don’t meet very often, as I haven’t received an indication of a decision in nearly a year.
State law says that property tax assessments must be based on actual market value. It further states that the assessor is not bound by the Board of Equalization’s decisions. The property tax assessment of our house doesn’t seem to be based on any known market — at least not on this planet. We couldn’t sell our house for the assessed value if it was gold plated. But the assessor just keeps going on his merry way.
I’ve run the numbers every year. You can get all property sales amounts from the assessor’s website. They come in PDF form. And there are many PDF converters to Excel available online. The increase in our property assessment has exceeded the increase in market sales values every year we’ve been here, although that’s only been since 2017.
My wife and I live on a fixed income. Our income is going to increase by around 3% this year. Our assessed value has more than doubled in six years. The assessor seems bound and determined to tax us out of our house. And so, for the first time in my life, I’m going to try to get out of a portion of my taxes by filing for an age exemption since we qualify for the greatest exemption allowed under the law.
It may be the only way to keep our house.
Bruce Peterson
Centralia
