The Property Assessment System

New York State Law requires all properties in your municipality (except in New York City and Nassau County) to be assessed at a uniform percentage of market value each year. This means that all taxable properties in your city, town or village must be assessed at market value or all at the same uniform percentage of market value each year. State Law also requires your assessor to include the estimate of the market value for each property, the assessment for each property and the uniform percentage for all taxable property on the tentative assessment roll.

The fairness, or equity, of the real property tax depends on whether similar properties are treated alike. By keeping assessments up-to-date each year, assessors can go a long way toward ensuring that taxpayers do not pay more or less than their fair share of taxes. Assessments are determined by the assessor, an elected or appointed local official, who independently estimates the market value of real property in your community. Market value is how much your property would sell for under normal conditions. Once the assessor estimates the market value of your property, the assessment is calculated. New York State law requires all properties to be assessed at a uniform percentage of value within your community. Your assessment is a percentage of market value. That percentage of market or full value at which properties are assessed within a community is called the Level of Assessment (LOA). For example, a LOA of 50 percent would indicate that assessments are at half of the market value; whereas, an LOA of 100 percent represents a community that is assessing at full value.

Your taxing jurisdiction (school district, town, county, etc.) is responsible for developing and adopting a budget. There are several steps involved in this process. Revenue from all sources other than the property tax is determined. These revenues are subtracted from the budget to arrive at the tax levy – the total amount to be raised through the property tax. The tax rate for properties in your community is then determined by dividing the tax levy by the total taxable assessed value of taxable real property in your community (tax levy¸ total assessed value = tax rate).