County tax information statements going into the mail

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Floyd County property owners will soon be receiving a statement – or perhaps statements – in the mail regarding proposed property tax rates payable in the upcoming fiscal year.

The mailings are part of a new state property tax law passed by the Legislature last year that, among many changes, requires county auditors to mail the statements to property owners by March 20.

Property owners should receive their statements beginning this week if they expect to receive a property tax bill payable in September 2024 and March 2025, said Floyd County Auditor Gloria Carr.

She emphasized that the statement is not a property tax bill, and the numbers on the statement likely will not reflect the actual property tax bill that property owners will get from the county treasurer’s office.

The statements include information regarding city, school and county budgets, but do not include every taxing authority, Carr said. Information about other budgets that will add to total property tax bills, such as for community colleges, assessor, township, hospital and agricultural extension service, are not included.

The purpose of the statement is to give taxpayers information about proposed city, school and county tax rates in time for them to attend the public hearings for those bodies before they approve their final budgets for the new fiscal year that will begin July 1.

After that hearing the governmental bodies could still lower tax rates but cannot raise them in their final budgets.

The budget statements will include the following information:

• Date, time, and location of public hearings of city, school district and county to consider certain proposed property tax rates for next fiscal year.

• Current, effective and proposed tax rate information for the included authorities and a comparison of those rates.

• How current taxes levied by the school district, county and city are distributed, along with a comparison of how taxes would be distributed in the current and proposed budget years.

Carr said that in addition to not including all the taxing bodies that contribute to a total property tax bill, the comparison between current rates and proposed rates could be misleading.

Included on the statements is the impact of the proposed city, school and county property tax rates on both a $100,000 residential property and $100,000 commercial property.

But that comparison doesn’t take into consideration any changes in assessed valuation from last year to this year, Carr said.

“The actual impact of the tax rates on your property could be quite different than the examples in the statement,” she said. “If your property value was recently reassessed to a higher amount, the example on the statement will not accurately reflect the effect of your valuation increase on your property taxes.”

Carr said she and her staff have been busy putting together more than 8,500 statements to stuff into envelopes and get in the mail. Although the statements are all for Floyd County, they also include all the separate taxing districts for the cities, for six different school districts and 12 different townships.

Taxpayers owning more than one property may receive multiple letters if those properties are in different taxing districts, she said.

Carr said she understands the reasons behind the state law, but there is definitely room for improvements in how it is being implemented.

One suggestion she said she will make is that the statements be allowed to be sorted by household mailing address rather than by property statement.

Contact information for each taxing entity will be listed on the notice along with their website information, if applicable, Carr said.

Additional information regarding the budget statements will be available online at dom.iowa.gov/property-taxes on or after March 20, 2024. That site says that a tool to estimate taxes by valuation amount will also be available soon.

Additional information regarding the statements will be made available online at https://dom.iowa.gov/property-taxes on or after March 20.