NJ Property Owners Filed Tax Appeals Last Year at Near-Record Pace
NJ Property Owners Filed Tax Appeals Last Year at Near-Record Pace (via NJSpotlight)
As New Jersey’s economy and housing market struggled to recover from the recession in 2013, property owners filed a near-record of more than 100,000 tax appeals, winning an average reduction of $40,093 in assessed valuation and a proportionate tax cut…
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I’ll leave the names of local/Monmouth county offenders off, but we all know who they are….
The whole property tax system is a giant scam and would be a felony theft offense if any private sector company operated the same way.
The tax commissioners in every county are all political activists aligned with the parties in control.
Want to file an appeal? Sure pay a small fee to have your appeal heard. That’s right, pay a fee to have the opportunity to complain, and possibly still get denied. And you MUST hire an attorney to argue on your behalf, your word and research is meaningless. If APP Data Universe shows your property taxes at $15,000/yr and your neighbors all pay less than $8,000, don’t assume that mean anything.
And who are the lawyers qualified to file your appeal for you? You guessed it, the lawyers who are also political activists aligned with the parties in charge. You’ll pay the layer you hire to represent you an amount about equal to what you’ll “save” on taxes the first 3-5 years, or until you’re reassessed just in time to need to hire them again.
And who decides your assessment? Another political activist, arbitrarily.
And what does the assessor do? Well he/she violates your 4th Amendment rights and unreasonably searches your private property. Not home? No problem, they’ll happy just take a walk through your property and check things out, then leave you a note asking when they can come back to check out the inside. Don’t want them inside? No problem, you can pay more taxes as punishment. Added a nice shed, some nice landscaping or anything that adds value to your private property? Well clearly the township should share in that added value, pay up. And why do they need to be inside anyhow, go to your County tax assessor’s website and you can find the site survey and floor plan for your house, or anyone’s house really.
Want to complain? Sure file a complaint with local authorities, they won’t care, and your complain might lead to some overtime that you’ll pay for in your property taxes. If somehow you get to a municipal court, expect to see a friendly municipal prosecutor there, also a political activist, also aligned with the parties in charge. I recently received a letter in the mail from an Assemblyman in the district (who is the municipal prosecutor in town) endorsing the town’s current mayor/council (who hire him as prosecutor), go figure the conflict of interest there.
Record appeals? Not surprised. Big business to support a broken political system.
TL;DR: — Good chance at any political event, you’ll get to meet:
Your Tax Assessor, a County Tax Commissioner, a Municipal Prosecutor, a certified Tax Appeal attorney, your local mayor/council, your county freeholders, your state assembly/senate reps. They’ll all be high-fiving and patting each other on the back for a job well done over some drinks. You’ll pay up because they are in cahoots with their shenanigans, shenanigans.