Homeowners bemoan rise in property taxes

Thursday, July 31, 2003 | 11:37 a.m.

How much do you owe?

To calculate your property-tax bill, find the property value as listed on the Web page of the Clark County Assessor(www.co.clark.nv.us / assessor/ Disclaim.htm).That value should be multiplied by .35 to get theassessed value of your property, or value that you will pay taxes on. Divide the assessed value by 100.

Multiply that number by your local tax rate, which can be found at www.co.clark. nv.us/finance/TaxBreakdown.htm.

For example:

The bill on a $200,000 home in Paradise township would be about $2,054. $200,000 x .35 = $70,000. $70,000 / 100 = $700. $700 x 2.9342 (the Paradise tax rate) = $2,053.94.

That should be your final tax bill, although that number could be less if you qualify for an exemption, or more if you failed to pay your full bill in previous years.

Sunrise Manor homeowner Gina Green wasn't expecting a bigger property tax bill. But that's what she got, and she's not happy about it.

"Everything I've heard or read up to this point said there would be no new property taxes," the stay-at-home mom said. "That is not true. They snuck them in.

"People need to be aware because they are going to go into sticker shock when they see it."

Like about 500,000 other property owners in Clark County, Green received her bill in the mail this week, and it was up about $60. Green said she didn't expect the increase because legislators, during the protracted debate on a new tax bill from Carson City, often said there would not be a property tax increase.

That was true in the main tax legislation, but several increases on both the state and county levels will take a bigger bite from homeowners' wallets.

In June the Legislature approved a penny per $100 of assessed value for dozens of capital works projects throughout the state. State voters last year also approved another penny for parks and conservation issues.

The county government also increased property taxes about 3.5 cents, money that will go to indigent care and the library district. The county had the option to increase taxes because those higher rates already were authorized by the state.

The property tax rate for indigent medical care went from seven cents to 10 cents per $100 of assessed value. It helps pay for services at the county's University Medical Center hospital system, which has been drowning in red ink for two years. The health-care system, including the largest hospital in the state, was hit hard when thousands of workers lost their health insurance after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. By state law, the county must provide care to those without insurance.

Michelle Shafe, assistant director in the Clark County assessor's office, said some of the state and local property taxes went down, too, but the overall impact was about 3.5 cents per $100 of valuation.

The topic is complex because, depending on where you live, there are 10 to 20 different taxes on a typical homeowner's property bill in Clark County. Different areas, even parts of unincorporated Clark County, pay different taxes. There are 84 tax districts in the county.

Shafe said the taxes -- even figuring out what the bill is based upon -- can be headache-inducing for many homeowners. Her office received about 1,600 calls to the assessor's customer service line on Monday alone, she said.

Many of the callers are unhappy with the indigent-care increase approved by the county commissioners, she said.

Laura Fitzpatrick, Clark County treasurer, said her office also gets many questions on the property-tax notice, and she is averaging 2,500 to 3,000 calls a day.

"They are the fairly standard questions that we get from taxpayers," Fitzpatrick said. "They want an explanation of why their taxes went up."

Fitzpatrick said that for many, the tax rates increased, but Green and other homeowners can take heart that a big part of the tax increase is because their homes are more valuable today than they were a year ago.

Property values go up at different rates throughout the county -- some even go down -- and that will be reflected in the homeowners' final bill. The resale value of homes has gone up about 10 percent annually over the last several years and will likely be more than that this year, said Dennis Smith, president of Las Vegas' Home Builders Research Inc.

Jeremy Aguero, a Las Vegas financial and tax analyst and technical adviser to Gov. Kenny Guinn's Task Force on Tax Policy, said a property's value typically has a bigger impact on a tax bill than an increasing tax rate.

"Property taxes are going to go up, but it has a lot more to do with the fact that you have something of much greater value" that's taxed, he said.

The good side of that is that most people will get more money for selling their home and can borrow larger sums against the equity in their homes. The down side is that property owners will pay more in property taxes.

Those explanations won't satisfy grumpy homeowners. Green, who pays a tax rate of 2.93 cents per $100 of assessed value, noted that several new line-items on her bill took the place of several that expired.

"They got real sneaky is what they did," Green said. "Everybody's being sneaky this year and we're being hit hard."

Although her assessed value went up about 7 percent, her overall bill went up 9 percent, Green said, from about $696 to $752.

"I've never had a $60 increase on my tax bill," she said.

Green said she will be paying more in taxes in other areas too because of the tax bill finally passed two weeks ago.

"I'm a smoker and like to have a beer once in a while, but I at least knew about those, and that's my choice," she said. "I'm getting slammed."