Jackson Co. taxpayers upset by high real estate assessments get more time to appeal
Note: This story has been updated to correct the date of the new deadline.
Jackson County taxpayers have until Sept. 3 to appeal their real estate assessments before the board of equalization.
The board’s decision to extend the deadline by a month was met with applause Tuesday morning at the panel’s meeting in the Historic Truman Courthouse in Independence.
The move came at the beginning of a daylong session in which the board was scheduled to hear dozens of appeals from homeowners who believe their properties were overvalued for tax purposes during this year’s countrywide reassessment.
More than 10,000 formal appeals have been filed so far, and that does not count the potentially thousands more that are pending informal reviews by the county’s assessment department.
The board of equalization is an independent body that decides whether to reduce the values of properties whose owners have challenged the value set by the assessment department. They can also increase the values, although that is a rarity.
The assessed value of a property has a direct bearing on the amount of taxes a property owner will be billed at the end of the year. However, the percentage increase in value does not mean someone’s taxes will go up by that amount. Most local taxing districts are required to roll back their levies, which will not be set until the fall.
This year’s docket is far bigger than normal because the county assessment department said it made a concerted effort to match assessed values to actual market values. That resulted in some assessments quadrupling, and some critics said those values were unrealistic.
This story was originally published July 30, 2019 at 9:25 AM.
