Property tax discussion

EDITORS NOTE:
Now that storms are out of here we put this discussion back on the top of the thread (a thread is computer geek talk for a srolling blog such as ours) 8 of you in the poll said you wanted to join in this chat with our Tax Assessor, Rob Thomas. So, where is your input? Down the road we willask other county officials to do this same type of thing. It is a good way for you meet your government.

Our Tax assesor speakes to the community

Here begins our series on property taxes.. Rob Thomas, Assesor is writing directly to our community website and will answer your questions with articles and in the comments below.

This article will stay at the top of the webpage for a few days..

All,

Let's start with a little history.

Oregon's property tax system began when Oregon became a state in 1859. Back then the Sheriff was the tax collector, and the property tax system financed all government including the state.

As you can imagine, people felt that the system was over used and that property taxes were too high!! The legislature tried to deal with the issue but failed for many years. Finally, in 1929 they were able to implement the first property tax relief measure to help ease the burden on the property tax system. That legislative action implemented the income tax system which was intended to help finance the state.

In 1990 the voters approved measure 5 (a constitutional amendment) to limit the amount of tax a property could pay to support general government and education services. These limits are still in effect today and they are $10. per thousand of assessed value for government and $5 per thousand for schools. Of course, there are allowances for bonds and local option levys passed by local voters.

Then in 1997 measure 50, another constitutional amendment, was implemented into the property tax system. This amendment was called the "cut and cap" amendment. The 1997 assessed value was figured by taking the 1995 real market value less 10% and using that number as the 1997 assessed value and maximum assessed value. This new maximum assessed value is limited to 3% growth per year. However, the final assessed value is the lesser of the maximum assessed value or real market value.

As a result, when a property has been paying on the real market value because it was less than the maximun assessed value the assessed value could increase as much as the real market value increases....up to the maximun assessed value.

There are some very good publications that explain this process better than I can. Please click on the link below to get a list of Oregon Department of Revenue publications on these and other topics.

http://egov.oregon.gov/DOR/PTD/ptd_pubs.shtml

Rob Thomas

Assessor