Why did I receive a letter from Ideal Appeals?
If you received our letter, it's because our system recently identified that your property tax assessment is likely too high. After analyzing millions of publicly available property tax assessment and appeal records, these data show that there is a good opportunity for you to reduce your property tax assessment by filing what's often called a property tax appeal. If you do so, and if your appeal succeeds, then you will save a significant amount of money on your property taxes.
Why should I choose Ideal Appeals to help me with my property tax appeal?
This is a fantastic question, and we love answering it. First of all, you do not need to hire any service to help you with your property tax appeal. Filing an appeal is something that you can do on your own without help, and it is usually free to do so. That being said, our approach is founded on technology, data and information systems. This means that our process is more convenient than doing so on your own or using other services, we enable you to achieve the statistically maximum possible property tax savings, we provide you with access to valuable information, meaningful insight, transparent communication and superior support, and we do this all at a very low cost to you when compared to our competitors.
The process from your perspective is completed entirely online in as little as one minute with no paperwork or additional steps required on your part. Our data-centric approach enables us to identify in seconds which comparable homes represent the absolute best statistical evidence to use in your appeal to argue for the maximum possible reduction. Likewise this approach gives you access to valuable insight into how your assessment compares to your neighbors, so that you know whether or not your assessment is fair and when it's appropriate to appeal. Our heavy focus on transparency and communication means that you'll hear from us regularly with clear and informative status updates so that you're always in the know. Lastly, the systems upon which we are founded help us operate very efficiently, which means we can offer our service for a significantly lower price than our competitors.
Can I use Ideal Appeals if I didn't receive a letter?
Our service is by invitation only, and we proactively identify and reach out to taxpayers who will benefit from our service and provide them with an identifier code to use to enroll in our service. If you didn't receive a letter from us, but are interested in using our service, please email us at support@idealappeals.com with your property address and we will reply back with more information!
How do the savings and fees work?
Assuming that your property tax appeal is successful, then your property tax assessment will be reduced from what it was prior to your appeal. In order to determine your savings resulting from the appeal, we first calculate what your annual property taxes were estimated to be using your old property tax assessment. Then, we calculate what your annual property taxes are estimated to be using your new, reduced property tax assessment resulting from the successful appeal. Finally, we find the difference between these two results, and that difference represents your savings.
To clarify, you don't receive your savings in the form of a refund check from the county. Instead, your property tax bill will be for a lower amount than it would have otherwise been had you not filed and won the property tax appeal.
Once the county publishes the results of your appeal online, we will reach out to describe your results in detail. At that point, we will also send you a bill for our service fee. Our service fee is calculated as a small percentage of your annual property tax savings as described above. There are no fees due up front, and if your property tax appeal is not successful, you will not be charged.
What is a property tax appeal?
A property tax appeal is essentially a way for you as the taxpayer to dispute and correct any inaccuracies in your property tax assessment. Your property tax assessment is a representation of what your tax assessor believes to be the market value of your home, and it is the value that is used to determine how much you will owe in property taxes. When the tax assessor determines your property tax assessment, they use a valuation model that factors in many variables which may include recent sales in your area, as well as the unique features and characteristics of your home. They do their best to come up with an accurate valuation, but their model isn't perfect, and so if you believe that their valuation is inaccurate, then you can submit an argument to have it corrected by filing a property tax appeal.
How does filing a property tax appeal save me money?
As mentioned briefly above, your property tax assessment is a representation of the market value of your home, and it is the value that is used to determine how much you will owe in property taxes. The higher the value is, the more you will owe in property taxes. If, for example, your property tax assessment is $300,000, but you have good reason to believe that the valuation should instead be $270,000, then you should file a property tax appeal. If the appeal is successful, and your tax assessment is reduced from the original $300,000 down to $270,000 (that's a 10% reduction), then this would result in a property tax bill that is also 10% less than it would have been had you not filed and won the appeal.
How does the property tax appeal process work?
The process outlined below may sound complicated, but if you choose to use our service, we will be on top of every step, providing you with regular and easy to understand status updates along the way. The process, terminology and timelines can vary depending upon local municipalities, but in general, the process works approximately as follows:
At some point during the year, your property tax assessor will provide you with a notice (usually by mail) informing you of your new property tax assessment. Your property tax assessment is a representation of what the tax assessor believes the market value of your home to be, and it is the property value that will be used to determine how much you will owe in property taxes. The greater the value, the more you will owe in property taxes.
When that notice is sent, if you believe that your assessment is inaccurate, you will typically have about 30 to 45 days to dispute the valuation by filing a property tax appeal. You can do this all on your own directly with the tax assessor (usually at no cost to you), or you can hire an attorney or tax professional to help you for a fee.
After your appeal is filed, the tax assessor will then take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to review your appeal and consider the information provided in support of your argument, as well as any information available to them that might disagree with your argument. Eventually they will make a decision either to reduce your assessment or to leave it unchanged, and they will notify you of this decision (usually by mail).
At that time, if you are satisfied with the result of the appeal, there is nothing further that you need to do. Your local municipality will automatically use the reduced property tax assessment resulting from your appeal when they calculate your property tax bill.
Alternatively, if you are not satisfied with the result of your appeal at this point, you usually have another 30 to 45 day window to escalate your appeal to a higher level, and have it reviewed by a separate local government agency, usually referred to as the review board, board of review or board of appeals.
The process is largely the same here at this higher level of review as it was before with the tax assessor, where this separate agency will take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to review your appeal and make a decision. Once complete, they will notify you of their decision (again usually by mail).
Once this decision has been made, whether you are satisfied or not with the result, the resulting property tax assessment will be what is used to calculate your property taxes for that year. There are options available to you to dispute your assessment further beyond this point, but doing so is often a very long process and a poor experience, and if successful, it would result in a refund of overpaid taxes later on, rather than a reduction in taxes up front. For these reasons, we typically don't recommend proceeding down this path, unless you have a very strong or particularly unique argument that you believe is highly likely to win.
This completes the tax appeal process. Later, the county will issue your property tax bill, and then eventually the process will repeat itself again in the following year. You will be notified of your new assessment and you can begin the appeal process again. Some counties update your tax assessment every year, while others do it once every 2, 3 or 4 years. Regardless of that frequency, you can appeal your tax assessment every year, and it is in your best interest to do so each time the data show that you are over-assessed.
How do I sign up?
If we've done our job well and convinced you to give our service a try, please click here and then search for your home using the identifier code provided to you by one of our team members or within your letter. Afterwards, you'll see an analysis of your current property tax assessment and instructions for how to proceed. The process can be completed very quickly entirely online, and once complete, there's nothing more you'll need to do!
If you have more questions not answered by the above, please contact us!
