Board of Assessors mails out annual property assessment notices

Published 4:17 pm Wednesday, June 7, 2017

The Whitfield County Board of Assessors mailed out annual property assessment notices for more than 46,000 real estate and personal property accounts on Friday. Taxpayers should expect assessments to arrive by mail in the coming days.

This year, the Assessors office performed an urban land uniformity project, affecting about 28,000 real parcels. Urban land includes most commercial and industrial properties, and also includes residential properties mainly within subdivisions and/or city limits. This project was implemented to ensure equitability and uniformity within urban areas of the county. In some cases, value changes were made based on market analysis.

Approximately, 3,000 rural real parcels are also subject to a land value change. About 25 percent of rural land parcels will be affected. Taxpayers with agricultural or conservation exemptions within the affected parcels should not be affected by this revaluation.

More than 28,000 urban and rural homes will be affected by an increase to the residential base cost per square foot improvement schedule. In other words, the Assessors office, after careful analysis, determined values for residential dwellings throughout the county to be slightly undervalued, based on the standards set by the Georgia Department of Revenue. Failure to meet these standards risked citation from the Department of Revenue. Thus, an increase to our base schedules was warranted.

Personal property taxpayers shouldn’t expect major changes in valuation this year. As always, personal property values are heavily weighted by data supplied by taxpayers on their annual tax return forms, which were due April 1. Also, the Board of Assessors has put in place an ongoing audit program to review personal property accounts regularly.

If you have questions or concerns about your assessment notice, feel free to contact the Assessors office at (706) 275-7410. A property owner has 45 days to file a written appeal. The deadline to file a written appeal is July 17.