$800,000 property/$455,000 assessment reduction: how?

How is it possible to get asessment reductions of $454,930 in one year off an $806,182 property tax assessment?

Glad you asked. It's not easy. No, it's not usual to get more than 50% off your assessment. And that didn't really happen here anyway. (Although one day soon we will tell you about a 44%-plus reduction off commercial property. But not today.) Today, we're going to tell you about a strange animal in Florida property tax aseessment law: "back assessment."

What is a back assessment? In Florida, the county property appraiser is mandated to add a property and its corresponding assessment to the current tax roll when it has "escaped taxation" in the one, two or three prior years. This typically happens where a building has been built on land which was previously vacant and the property appraiser failed to notice it and place it on the corresponding year's tax roll.

So, how'd I get a $454,930 in one year off an $806,182 property tax assessment?
It went like this.

A taxpayer received four tax assessment notices on his residence last August--all at the same time. One for 2004 and three others for back assessments for 2003, 2002 and 2001, respectively. I filed appeals on all four. By the time I was done, I had obtained total assessment relief exceeding $454,000. This corresponds to actual tax savings of $9,950.
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To be sure you're doing the most you can to keep your property taxes as low as the law allows them to be, contact a Florida property tax professsional, whether it's a lawyer, real estate broker, accountant or other experienced professional.

Daniel A. Weiss has over 24 years property tax experience. Mr. Weiss represented the Miami-Dade County taxing authorities in litigation and appeals between 1981 and 1995 as a Miami-Dade Assistant County Attorney and has since represented taxpayers in property tax matters.