Grieving Your Property Taxes

There are few places these days where homeowners aren’t complaining about how high property taxes are. It’s a legitimate gripe when you consider the cost of everything seems to be increasing exponentially. School taxes are a big part of taxes in higher amounts each year due to efforts to subsidize new programming, infrastructure updates, and comply with necessary field and equipment upgrades. Grieving your taxes is a way to protect yourself from regular tax increases by proactively assuring that your property is assessed at a reasonable value.

What is a tax grievance?

When a property owner feels that they are paying too much on their property taxes or that the town has assessed that property at a higher value than it is worth, they can decide to file a grievance. A homeowner can take steps to do this on their own but hiring an experienced attorney is preferable in that it makes the process so much easier.

Benefits of Hiring an Attorney Handle Your Tax Grievance

• Save yourself some time. While filing a tax grievance isn’t a complicated process, it does involve a lot of time and effort. Just organizing the assessment, filling out forms, and writing letters of support can seem so overwhelming to many as to be prohibitive. Why do that to yourself when there are professionals who can do it for you and do a better job?

• Unless you are successful, you won’t be charged. There should not be any upfront charges, and in the event of success, your attorney can charge anywhere from forty to fifty percent of the first year’s tax savings-which still gives you more savings than before the grievance was filed! The percentage upon success also incentivizes your attorney to do the best job possible with your grievance to get the most savings for both of you!

• Attorneys can speak for you at the Grievance Day Hearing. Although most people don’t look forward to speaking in an open hearing, it pays to have an experienced professional to represent your position on this day when a three-member board will review your tax assessment.

• Your attorney also handles appeals- If your grievance is denied, the decision can be appealed within a 30-day timeframe. With such a relatively short amount of time to file this paperwork, it is preferable to let your representative handle it for you.