(The Center Square) – A new report says there are some lingering questions about how Milwaukee County communities figure out their property taxes.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum is out with a new study on how Milwaukee County’s local tax assessment process helps and hurts.
“In Milwaukee County alone, there are 10 cities and nine villages, each of which are responsible for assessing property values each year and transmitting them to the state Department of Revenue. These 19 municipalities – ranging from the city of Milwaukee to smaller, quieter communities such as the village of River Hills – use a mix of in-house assessors and contract firms to separately determine property values,” the report states. “Though this approach maximizes local control, it also limits economies of scale, leads to quite different approaches among neighboring communities, and may at times affect the accuracy and uniformity of assessments.”
One of the biggest concerns is that the local control model leads to differences between neighboring communities.
The report said allowing each community to handle its own taxes, and save money, is not always a good thing.
“In our survey, the leaders of eight municipalities, or almost
half, said their annual costs of conducting assessments totaled amounts that worked out to less than $15 per parcel. Two communities – Hales Corners and Cudahy – reported costs that amount to less than $10 per parcel, a strikingly low cost,” the Policy Forum wrote. “Perhaps not surprisingly, assessors and other experts said that this low-cost approach can affect quality. The current system can lead to out-of-date or inaccurate property information and involve inadequate or even in some cases improper methods of valuing property.”
The report noted that one community is currently suing the assessor it hired to calculate property taxes.
Wisconsin law allows local communities to handle their own tax assessments, so it’s not just a Milwaukee County issue. And the report said other communities could be dealing with the same issues as Milwaukee County communities.
The Policy Forum report doesn’t make any recommendations, but it does offer a look at an “option.”
“The biggest change would involve municipalities voluntarily partnering with one another to form a new commission that would hire its own assessment staff to value properties. This approach could improve the accuracy and uniformity of assessments but could involve a substantial increase in costs for nearly all of the 16 municipalities that currently use a contract assessor. A similar tradeoff would result from potential partnerships between two or three municipalities to start handling their assessment in-house,” the report added.
Read the full report here.
