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Property Tax Notices Coming Soon
May 15, 2008 
We had a chat with the man everyone loves to hate, Ada Assessor Bob McQuade, about the tax assessment notices set to go out over the weekend.
He tells the GUARDIAN that overall values are nearly flat–a .5% increase. There were actually 44,000 residential properties showing a DECREASE in value, but 100,000 with an increase of some sort.
McQuade noted 1,300 homes showed INCREASES in value of more than 20% and 8,000 parcels remained unchanged.
What this means to all of us isn’t really much. Cities, Ada county, schools, the Highway District and about 60 other districts from library to mosquitos LEVY against the VALUE.
In short, they set their budgets each year and can only raise the budget by a max of 3%.
If the property value goes down, the levy percentage will increase.
The silver lining in the dark tax cloud is the Homeowners Exemption have gone up. This year it is 50% of the assessed value of both land and improvements up to a max of $100,938 that is tax free.
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Comments & Discussion
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May 15, 2008, 1:07 pm
snip…There were actually 44,000 residential properties showing a DECREASE in value, but 100,000 with an increase of some sort…snip
And the basic unfairness is that although the amount of tax paid will vary because of the increase or decrease, the services received by those taxpayers will remain the same. As will their ability to pay.
May 16, 2008, 12:47 am
Let’s hope the assessor doesn’t use the same printer as the county clerk does! The election mailing that arrived this week indicated that I am in Congressional District 18. Wow, Idaho has sure grown!
May 16, 2008, 8:28 am
It takes so much money to run the county, city, etc. If the property valuation is decreased then the levy is just raised to realize that same amount of money. If governmnet spending is to be curbed, it needs done at the budget setting level.
May 16, 2008, 5:22 pm
Didn’t we get sold on the increase in sales tax (1% increase), to decrease the property tax? Anybody remember?
May 16, 2008, 6:16 pm
The 2008 assessed values are now posted at http://www.adacountyassessor.org/propsys/HelpIndex.jsp. At least in my neighborhood, the values did not decrease and there have been no sales in over 18 months. Two houses listed and no offers. Didn’t the newspaper just say that values have declined about 10% over the last 12 months.
May 16, 2008, 6:47 pm
“The silver lining in the dark tax cloud is the Homeowners Exemption have gone up. This year it is 50% of the assessed value of both land and improvements up to a max of $100,938 that is tax free.”
Of course, they probably will raise your assessed value from say $100,000 to maybe $130,000 or whatever it takes to keep gouging you.
May 19, 2008, 8:57 am
It appears that Risch called in a special session.
Education was on a firm 3 tenths of one percent by taxes collected by the home owner.
Risch signed into law that value increase would go to the schools based on Home values increasing.
The democrat legislatures indicated with their no votes, that this would prove risky at best.
Risch now runs for United States Senate indicating past achievements of making sound decisions for our Idaho Schools.
Risch also is tired of taxes by the Federal Gov.
Risch increased the non homeowner taxes by 20 percent and was able to do this in a time period of 7 months.
Risch also is running a campaign based on personal
rights of the voters.
Hmm, I think he had Elk shot in south east Idaho which was owned by a tax payer of Idaho.
I do not understand how my property tax went up this last year and Risch indicates that he personally made it go down?
May 19, 2008, 7:54 pm
Risch’s radio ad, about which the previous commenter writes (I think), is very deceptive. He claims responsibility for cutting taxes (something done by a bi-partisan legislature) as if he did it all by himself, and does not claim ownership of the 1% sales tax increase. And he makes no mention of the fact that the recent tax cuts were for businesses and NOT for people.
May 19, 2008, 11:16 pm
Sigh…
May 24, 2008, 11:20 am
We got our assessment notices today. For some reason our little .14 acre in Boise is worth more than our .29 acre in Eagle. That seems exceedingly strange.