Latest / Saluda County Unplugged / Property Tax Reassessment
Transcript
- Josh Morton: If you've heard the word reassessment lately and immediately started wondering what it means for you or your property taxes, you're not alone. Every five years, South Carolina counties go through a reassessment process, and this year it's Saluda County's turn. Have questions or an idea for an upcoming episode? Email us at publicinfo at saludacounty.sc.gov. And remember, the road to success is always under construction. We'll see you next week. Welcome back to Saluda County Unplugged, the podcast where we break down local government, community issues, and the decisions that impact life here in Saluda County. I'm And I'm Rachel. Today we're joined by Saluda County Tax Assessor Justin Ridgell to talk about what reassessment is, why it happens, how property values are determined, and what residents should expect over the coming months. This week on Saluda County Unplugged. Today we're joined by Saluda County Tax Assessor Justin Ridgell. Justin, thank you for being here. Thank you all for having me. So before we jump into a conversation about the reassessment, let's talk a little bit about what the tax assessor is actually responsible for. Yeah, we're responsible for all the Avilurum taxation of every real estate property and mobile home in the county, which basically we value every property to market or taxable value, whichever one you want to call it. so you basically look at the property and try to determine what that property is worth. Yes. Okay. Justin, I think one big question that would be good for us to kind of jump into the reassessment with is why are we reassessing home values? The state of South Carolina and this South Carolina Code of Laws mandates us to reassess the entire county on a five year cycle, so we have to revalue each parcel at that time. in two thousand seven the legislator passed a law requiring us to implement a fifteen percent cap on that five year reassessment. Therefore, that limits how assessing officials can increase the taxable value. This has helped taxpayers tremendously because real estate values have steadily increased over time. The last five years has been a huge increase per the market data. ⁓ you can look online at listings and sales and see for yourself, Saluta County is on the rise. I myself like to stay conservative because after all it's for tax purposes. But also have to do what the state of South Carolina tells me to do by law. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, you might want to follow that. ⁓ It's important that you follow the law. That's that's good. So ⁓ this year we have delayed the by a year. Originally it was supposed to be done in twenty twenty six, but council passed an ordinance recently to move that reassessment to twenty twenty-seven. ⁓ And we that that was because of a staffing shortage in your office. you lost your appraiser So do you wanna talk a little bit about what y'all are to overcome that at this point? I know you've contracted with some folks to come in and help out. Sure. Yeah. We've got three guys right now, it'll be a total of five on a rotating schedule coming in helping on Mondays and Fridays, two days a week, and they'll help us with the reassessment process and day-to-day stuff, whatever we need, And they probably have a hundred years of assessing ⁓ experience the five of ⁓ Now will this reassessment affect every Every property owner in Saluda County and will it affect them in the same way? ⁓ not necessarily. It will affect them all, but in some areas, of course, there are gonna be higher increases per you know the market trends your location, it's big on you know your market value for sure. Okay, so we're talking about homes values going up. How do you determine a home's value? The value of home is determined by cost data and also comparable sales data. mainly we try to lean a lot on the comparable sales when we can. we don't have many cookie cutter neighborhoods in our county, so therefore it's hard to do that in some cases, and that's where cost comes into play and depreciation depending on the ⁓ the state of the property. So ⁓ how important is it residents to attention to what's going on during this reassessment? Owners should definitely pay attention not only to for the values in the county and their neighborhoods, just to know to what is in their surrounding areas. But also 'cause increase on a tax bill can lead to an increased mortgage payment, if it's an escrow. So after the reassessment is completed, what happens then? Once we complete reassessment, we send out notices to let the public know what new value will be. ⁓ Of this is not a bill. It states that in bold letters, but most think the assessed value is the taxed amount, which is a common thing. that's not the case. The assessed value is either four or six percent of the taxable value. Those notices are also sent out to allow the owner to appeal, which they have 90 days to do so by state law. Okay, so let's talk for a second about that four percent and six percent. Because I think this is something that gets confusing to people. the four percent is for an owner-occupied ⁓ home. so my home that live in here in Saluta County, I'm taxed at the four percent rate. I also own a home in Barnwell, South Carolina, where I lived before I came here. I I've kept my house down there and it's a rental property that's taxed at the 6%. But what is that based off how is that calculated? so let's say I have a home that's worth $100,000. what does that 4% mean for that $100,000 I'm taxed on $4,000. ⁓ No, you would be taxed the four thousand is just your assessment, you know. Right. And then that's multiplied by the millage, but there's a huge difference in the four and six percent since the state changed that because they do the school operating portion of the millage is wiped out. Right. So it's so it's a lot more it's confusing because it's a lot bigger than just the two percent. Right. Yeah, right. But if I'm looking at it, the four percent. ⁓ if I a hundred thousand and for our listeners out there, I I don't know the answer to this question, that's why I'm asking it. So I'm putting Justin on the spot here. But so my house look l to make the math easy is worth a hundred thousand dollars. And so ⁓ is assessed at a hundred thousand dollars, but then as you start looking at the assessed value, you then take four percent of that, is that right? So it becomes four thousand dollars is correct what my tax is based off of. ⁓ And then apply the millage rate to that four thousand dollars, which ⁓ means I'm not paying four thousand dollars in taxes, I'm paying whatever that calculation is. But the millage is is based off of that four thousand, not the hundred thousand. Exactly. Okay. 'Cause that is something that I think is very confusing for people a as you're trying to understand this and you know millage in itself ⁓ is a complicated ⁓ you know none of this is ⁓ i is super and know, so we're we're all trying to understand a little better what all this means. ⁓ but that that's helpful to understand that that four percent is literally you take a hundred thousand dollar home and and instead of basing it off a hundred thousand, you're basing it off of four thousand. Or if it's a rental property, you're basing it off of six thousand. But then as you mentioned, the school millage and and all that that that factors in. So it makes a it's much bigger than a two percent difference between four percent and six percent. Right. And agriculture as well. at four percent but it's at a lower cost the the land on ag is you know hundreds of dollars per acre not thousands per acre you know so it's ⁓ very interesting as we through all this what is the one thing that you wish people better understood about the reassessment Well, it's not to increase your taxes just because we want to. been around since the seventies statewide. ⁓ it's the counties and like I said, it's the council's responsibility to set the millage every year. We just provide the values on, that five year cycle. Right. Now, speaking of the reassessment not being done to increase taxes, can you talk a little bit about the rollback? Yeah, what happens there is it used to be a five year rollback, which if anything that's in agricultural use. Then when it's whoever changes the use of it to put a residence or business on, whatever it may be, now we roll back three years, which is a calculation we have to do based on the market value versus what it was taxed at. Right. And like I said, usually if it's one acre, it could be two or three hundred dollar one time tax bill. It's not a recurring thing. It's just a one time thing that again's been around since the seventies. Right. And the state code of laws ⁓ has been brought up multiple times to do away with it or drop it to a year or But luckily it did come down some to help out, you know, developers or whoever with that. Right. Yeah. And I know also, ⁓ when this reassessment is done, there's also an adjustment that's made to ⁓ the millage to to keep taxes from just overnight jumping astronomically. I I know there's some adjustments that are made there as well. So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, on the millage, like I said, that's up, you know, to administration and council what the county needs. But yeah, when you when there's that big of an increase in the total value of the county, then they have to usually roll back some. Right. so it doesn't hit everybody so hard. It doesn't mean your taxes aren't gonna go up. 'Cause they can't go up but so much. Well I I know I guess it ⁓ ⁓ Probably twenty years ago or so, Saluda County did a reassessment ⁓ and property did go up a lot. And there was a lot of concern amongst the citizens that property taxes were were fixing to just jump an astronomical amount, it's because nobody had explained that. as the total value of the county goes up, the millage is adjusted so that there's not a huge overnight jump in what people are paying in property taxes. So I think it's important for people ⁓ to know that. And then one of the things we've talked about on the podcast previously is the local option sales tax, which is a 1% sales tax. This is not the capital project sales tax that we've talked about, but the local option sales tax is there to help operate. offset the tax bills for property owners. So if you look on your property tax bill, you'll actually see ⁓ a section on there that talks about the lost tax, local option sales tax. And it'll tell you just how much you saved ⁓ on your tax bill because of that sales tax. ⁓ So those are all important things that factor into this. it's not just the value of the home. There's a lot of other factors that play into what the property tax calculation is. That's right. So And that fifteen percent the the every five years you were limited to go up on the value fifteen percent. So that helped out a lot for taxpayers too, 'cause like I said, that's when that happened back then in O seven when that was put into law right after that ⁓ six reassessment. So that was, you know, statewide. So that's that helps out a lot too. Yeah. But you know, whenever you see your home value jump that much, it definitely is a kind of a nerve wracking thing, ⁓ thinking that you're gonna pay that much. But county government doesn't exist to tax people. our goal as a county is to bring in enough revenue to provide essential services to make life better for the citizens of Saluda County. we're not here to try to bring in a bunch of money and I promise you if you saw what county employees get paid, you'd know there ain't no pockets being lined here. Matter of fact, ⁓ ⁓ the people are gonna be too to get this reference, but we could all be out flying our Hoover flags, acting the Great Depression when they pulled their pockets inside. out because they were empty. right. ⁓ know it's but that's not the purpose of this. The the purpose of this is to to maintain the true value of the homes based off that and to make sure that we are taxing things appropriately and fairly correct. Yeah. All right, Justin, thank you so much for being here. I know I've learned a lot today, and I hope that our listeners also learn a lot. It seems like this is a really complicated process. Your job seems very complicated. I'm glad that you do it and not me. and thank you all for listening to Saluda County Unplugged. If you found this episode helpful, please sure to share it with your friends, family, and neighbors, and we'll see you next time.