Hey, maybe I’m wrong, but this Mecklenburg County video on how to appeal your property tax revaluation — with new values due in county mailboxes any day now — strikes me as extremely misleading.
The insistence that the reval does not define the universe of taxpayers’ tax liability is bizarre. In fact, the emphasized statement in the video “Your tax bill is not part of Revalution” is positively false. Tax bills are a function of the property’s valuation, hence revaluation. Yes, the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners must set the property tax rate to produce the other half of the equation, but the assessment and appeal process has nothing to do with that.
The overall tone and tenor of the video makes it seem like a property’s valuation is an esoteric and antiseptic issue that is incidental to the county’s fiscal process. And that just is not reality — especially with so many homeowners about to be told that — absent a property tax rate cut by the county board — their tax bills for 2011 will go up to 10 to 15 percent over 2010.
Update: Whoa. Condos won’t get revals until March.
