Comment by bombcar
1 day ago
The dirty secret is that assessments don’t matter overall - just proportionally.
The county or city or whatever has a tax budget of $500 million, and divides it by whatever percentage your house’s assessment is of the assessed whole, and allocates it to you. My property taxes vary without assessment variations, and have gone down on years my assessment has gone up.
Barring anything weird like prop 13.
A lot of people seem to think that the property tax is set at a certain percentage, and if property values rise, the government just dances around in a fountain of dollar bills.
Everywhere I've looked, it's as you say: the local government sets a budget first, then that year's property tax rate is set at a level which brings in that much money.
There is a somewhat delayed and simplified version of what people think there is - as property values climb, the city will notice and budget more (or less if severe drops) and try to stay within some standard percentage.