In lovely twist of irony, Nassau County Tax Assessor Harvey Levinson has applied for a reduction in his assessment, according to this Newsday article.
Nassau Assessor Harvey Levinson, who vigorously defends the accuracy of the countywide property tax assessment system he oversees, has challenged the assessment on his own Garden City condominium.
In a handwritten grievance signed by him and his wife, Levinson is asking the county’s Assessment Review Commission to reduce the value of his fourth-floor apartment in the exclusive Wyndham West complex.
It’s not that Harvey isn’t entitled to challenge his taxes, an onerous burden for anyone in the county no matter whether you’re getting a pension plus salary like Harvey or just work for a living like those of us who didn’t have the foresight to suck early and hard on the government teet.
The problem is that Harvey is the point man for the proposition that his office’s assessments are right on target, even though he upped the ante this year again while the real estate market fell another 10-20%.
Of course, the absolute assessments really don’t matter all that much, provided that absurd increases are applied across the board. If your neighbor’s house increased as much as yours, then everything remains the same as far as your proportionate share of taxes. Most people don’t get how this works, and are blown away by the absurdity of their individual assessments without recognizing that it’s relative assessment that determines how badly they get hurt.
But the fact that Harvey, in his personal capacity, takes issue with his own office’s work, is the type of thing that opens the door to the real complaints. The initial assessment, the baseline used to make annual adjustments, has put many people at a perpetual disadvantage relative to their neighbors because it was just so unbearably bad. No matter how many times Harvey postures for the media, it’s not going to change the fact that the initial reassessment, when the county switched from a 1934 building cost basis to present value basis, stunk.
The bottom line is that government needs to raise money to pay for all that good stuff it does. Some of it is the stuff you ask for. Some of it is the stuff that makes politicos feel very important. Either way, they spend and somebody has to pay.
Nobody, as far as I can tell, has devised a taxing scheme that doesn’t leave somebody feeling screwed. It’s largely a matter of who gets screwed (since somebody has to) and can do the least damage. Government folks realize that there’s no way to make everybody happy, so they shrug off the complaints as being an unavoidable fact of life. To a certain extent, that’s true.
But there has long been recognition that property taxes, as a means of collecting local government revenue, is possibly the worst of all possible worlds, being highly regressive, undermining the social policies favoring home ownership and being essentially impossible to get right. But it’s here, it’s written in stone and anybody foolish enough to suggest changing it will immediately be subject to grave mental anguish.
Nobody reduced my taxes this year Harv. Hope you have better luck than I did.
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I don’t have my usual economic justification for this, but I think the worst part of property taxes is that you can never really own your home. I have a mortgage, so property taxes are just one part of the high cost of home ownership for me. But people who pay off their mortgages—often elderly and on a fixed income—deserve to have the piece of mind of owning a home that can never be taken away from them.
I would be very interested in understanding better how property tax became the vehicle of choice for local government funding. Would it be a throw back to the days when property ownership was required for voting? Windy, or should I say
I was counting on you for your economic prowess. Don’t let me down.
Bless you Scott. You are a man among men.
But your blogging software still doesn’t understand links.
That’s because only I get to post links. Blawger’s prerogative.
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I think the big advantage of property taxes is that it’s hard to hide property. In fact, modern property ownership is defined and defended by the government, so you have to report your property to the taxing authorities in order to claim ownership.
Cash and personal property, however, are pretty much yours by possession, so there’s little additional benefit to telling the government about them, and a lot to lose if they’re subject to taxation.
So local governments are funded by property taxes because it’s easy to assess. But that would be true at any level of government, wouldn’t it? I guess the real question, then, is why don’t we have federal property taxes?
I haven’t got a clue. Maybe land is one of the few things it’s still hard to claim federal jurisdiction over?
Sorry. Can’t please everybody.
Government has the choice of the big 3: Property, Sales and Income. Sales is the most regressive, while income is the most progressive. Property, I believe, can be identified as within the local jurisdiction easily, and makes a good target. But it’s also a poor indicator of use of services and distribute the cost very unevenly, especially in an extreme taxing jurisdiction like Nassau County, where some taxes are seriously through the roof.
Of course, there’s the cash and carry method of governance, where identifiable costs be levied against the users. Maybe we can have cops with those credit card readers hanging from their belt. “So you’ve been assaulted, madam. Will that be Visa or Mastercard?” At least they would be nicer to get the tip.
I litigate tax assessment claims for commercial and residential property in Nassu County and have done so for 28 years as a licensed attorney. Mr. Levinson has made a few public relations errors. First, since he states he is selling his home shortly, I wonder if he filed his own greivance because he wants to correct the error in the assessment faster than it would normally be resolved for other owners–so his tax bill gets corrected faster than anyone else filing a greivance this year.
I was shocked to learn that many of our client’s assessments were increased as of Janaury 1, 2008 in a declining market. How absurd to let the Assessors appraisal machines spew higher assessments in this market. If I were the Assessor under these circumstances, I would tell everyone connected with the process to flag any increase in value–for whatever reason ( and a few are the result of the ridiculous 6% annual cap on assessments–not values)and cancel the increases and put a 2-6% drop overide.
If the County merged the 4 class tax system that shifts tax burdens to commercial owners and apartments big time, the tax bill on homeowners would go up, the true cost of running schools and government would be revealed, and maybe we would have real tax revolt. Souzzi as the head of a tax reform system is laughable. He has spent our money builidng a nice new office for himself so he would enjoy the next term.
If property owners were assurred a realistic assessment review system that was flexible and efficient, and was not skewed to the government’s interests rather than doing real justice for homeowners, taxpayers would have more trust in government. The review system in Nassau is run by Nassu and is not independent,. It is beholden to the executive brach and collaborates with the County Attorney to defeat taxpayer claims and make it hard to prosecute claims.
People shouldn’t be afraid of government–the government should be afrais of the people. ( ” V” the movie)