Lowering your Atlanta property tax bill

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

What you can do now

● Look at your 2009 property tax bill. If you can’t lay your hands on it, you can look it up online. Many counties have searchable databases of residential property (addresses for the five largest metro counties are below).

● Check the ZIP code map to see how your house compares with the rest of your ZIP on sales and tax values. Also, what do you know about sales of other homes in your neighborhood? Do home values seem to be going down? If so, the county may have overvalued your house for tax purposes. If you think that’s the case, go to step 3.

● File a form called a property tax return. List what you think your house is worth as of Jan. 1, 2010. Download and print the one-page form here.

Section C asks you to list last year’s “fair market value” on your land and on your house. Then it asks you to list the value of the land and the house this year. This is where you tell the county the value of your property has gone down. You must send the form to your county tax assessor by April 1. (DeKalb and Gwinnett residents must file by March 1.)

● The assessor reviews your return and decides whether it reflects your property value. Usually you will receive a response between April and June.

● If the county turns you down, you have the right to appeal. This gets a little tricky, but ... you also have the right to appeal if the county reappraises your property (whether you filed a return or not). But if the county doesn’t reappraise, and you didn’t file a return, you can’t appeal. This didn’t matter so much when tax valuations often were lower than actual value. Now, however, tax values are often greater than what your house is worth, which means you’ll be paying too much in taxes. So it’s in your interest to file a return.

Find your neighbors’ tax values (or yours)

Metro tax assessors enable you to search for data on individual properties countywide.

Clayton: http://weba.co.clayton.ga.us:8003/indextcm.shtml

Cobb: http://www.cobbtax.org/Search/GenericSearch.aspx?mode=PARID

DeKalb: http://web.co.dekalb.ga.us/taxcommissioner/search.asp

Fulton: http://www.fultoncountytaxes.org/fultoniwr/11_depts_property_taxes.asp

Gwinnett: http://gwinnetttaxcommissioner.manatron.com/Tabs/ViewPayYourTaxes.aspx

Note: In its first in-depth analysis of property taxes, the AJC limited its research to the five most populous counties in metro Atlanta: Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton and Gwinnett, which account for more than three-fourths of the metro population.

Appeal your appraisal

File your appeal within 30 to 45 days of receiving your notice (counties have different deadlines). First stop: the county board of assessors. If you can’t reach agreement there, next stop is 1) a Board of Equalization, which is a panel of county residents that hears appeals unresolved at the assessor level, or 2) arbitration. There are two kinds, binding and nonbinding. After that, you may appeal to your county superior court. Note that both arbitration and appealing to superior court carry fees.

More info on appeals: https://etax.dor.ga.gov/ptd/adm/taxguide/appeals.aspx