A little article buried in this morning's Coeur d'Alene Press caught my attention.  A Kootenai County resident, Dennis Slavick, will be stating his case to the Idaho board of Tax Appeals at 10:30 a.m Monday morning, at the Ameritel Inn in Coeur d'Alene.

It seems Mr. Slavick has done a lot of research on the way Kootenai County assesses property.  He thinks that instead of using sales spanning the previous year, the county should base them on the market value of the year they are levied.  Sounds reasonable to me.

As a Realtor, I have to admit that I have found Kootenai County's system to be very interesting as well as confusing for most people when prorations are calculated at closings.  Having sold real estate in Colorado before moving back home to Coeur d'Alene last year, I am still trying to understand why we do it here the way we do. 

Next week, when my client closes on her cute little vintage home, she is going to have to credit her buyer with the property taxes that have acrued from January 1 of 2009 to October 27.  The problem is those taxes haven't been assessed yet, and won't be until December.  So no one REALLY knows how much she is going to owe to credit the buyer, who will then have to pay the seller's portion of the year's taxes when they come due.  The amount my seller will credit the buyer will be based on last year's tax amount.  The buyer will receive the estimated tax money from the seller at closing and will be responsible to pay the tax bill when it comes.  If the bill is higher, the buyer will have to cough it up.  If it's less, the buyer will have a surplus. 

Now contrast that to my previous county, were values are assessed on January 1st for the current year.  An actual, true proration can occur.  Let's say the annual tax bill was $365.  That averages a dollar a day.  My seller will have owned the house for exactly 229 days of 2009.  At her closing next week she would credit the buyer with $229 to pay the tax bill when it comes due at the end of the year.  Pretty simple. 

Mr. Slavic says, "I've done a lot of research on this, all the way back from 1914 to what they have done presently on market values.  They are either erroneous or they're ignoring it or they're just flat breaking the law."   There wasn't enough information in the story to understand entirely what his complaint is, but I agree with him that there is room for improvement.

The state board will likely make a decision on the appeal next summer.