State Specific Question About: CALIFORNIA (CA)

Hello everyone,

I need legal help with my property tax assessment appeals.

Has anyone here had to hire an attorney to go with you before the board?

If so, how do I go about finding a Real Estate attorney that practices this particular issue?

i've called several & not finding any that have done this before.

Thank you for the replies.

I really need to find an attorney, but don't know if there's a particular designation besides Real Estate attorney.

Back story:

I appealed the assessment for the last 5 years.

In the "fine print" of the appeals paperwork it says they can also raise the assessment for the year in question.

That's exactly what the County is doing!

They say that the property was under assessed for those years.

His the want me to pay the balance between what I paid and what the new assessed amount is.

This doesnt sound right to me.

PS: if you have a realtor friend have them pull a few of the property profiles on properties Identical or very similar to yours and see what their taxes are. The more data you can gather the less expensive a lawyer visit will be.

Karin,

I don't know CA procedure.

I THOUGHT I knew my local procedure so I spent $6000 on appraisals. Turns out they don't use appraisals to assess. Total waste.

They use the rent x a multiplier.

We can meet with a person and work out a number, no board hearing needed.

A local realtor evolved into a property tax consultant. Probably who you need - a person who knows property values, property taxes, the officials, and how to make them happy. Probably has lunch with them on Tuesdays.

Karin,

There are law firms and individual attorneys that specialize in state and local tax issues in California, as opposed to Federal income tax.

Depending on the law office, they specialize in things like business tax, property tax, sales tax, documentary transfer tax.

In addition. as Robert J mentioned above, there are Property Tax Specialists, some of those even though they might not require a lawyer might also bill at an expensive hourly rate or they might bill in the way Robert J mentioned. However, they might also have people in their company they are appraisers as well.

I have never used any of them so I cannot give you a recommendation with any confidence in their quality.

I can tell you that some lawyers in California have a specialization in tax law listed on the California State Bar website sorted by county BUT most of those probably deal with income tax disputes with the IRS and will lack the knowledge and experience of an assessment appeal specialist whether that specialist is a lawyer or not.

You can search for an attorney that is a Property Tax Specialist or a non-lawyer that is an Assessment Appeals Specialist in your area but ideally you would want someone to recommend such a person or company that knew they were good.

You are right to not assume that real estate lawyers would automatically know about this field. Many do not but as mentioned above by Plenty, a quality real estate lawyer or a quality income tax lawyer might have a good recommendation for you.

Also, whether you need a lawyer might depend on the complexity of the issue. A non-lawyer assessment appeals specialist might be fine for a simple disagreement on value but some issues might require greater knowledge of the law.

An advantage of someone that will appeal it on a contingency arrangement with you is that if the County is correct and it has been under assessed, you might avoid paying for something that doesn't help.

I had a commercial place, a Pizza Hut over in Dixon Illinois that was getting charged over $30,000 in property taxes annually. It cost me about $5,000 for an appraisal and the taxes were cut down to about $16,000.

On commercial real estate $1 saved is multiplied by the Cap Rate of that period to get you what the increase in value to you. So that one action allowed me to gain almost $200,000 in equity. Was that $5,000 well spent?