Property values are usually determined by a local or county assessor — someone whose job is specifically to do this. To find the value of your residence, you can contact your local assessor’s office or else your local tax authority. Note that many assessors have tools online that will allow you to look up your property’s value based on your address. The assessor’s office for Santa Clara Country in California has a great example of this sort of tool. [3] X Research source You can also sometimes get home value estimates from financial institutions. For example, Chase Bank offers a free online home value tool.
For example purposes, let’s find the property taxes for a house in ABC County, USA. The county assessor values the land at $357,000, mainly due to its close proximity to a vibrant, bustling downtown area and the convenience of two nearby freeways. The assessor values the house itself at $307,000. Adding these two values, the total value of our property is 357,000 + 307,000 = $664,000. In the next few steps, we’ll use this value to find our property taxes.
Like your assessed property value, you can usually get this information from your local tax authority. For example, in Santa Clara County, California, tax rate summaries are available online for free. [5] X Research source Many municipalities apply the tax rate “per mill”, or per $1,000 in assessed value. Don’t let this confuse you — one mill is just 1/10 of one cent. [6] X Research source For practical purposes, we can say that 10 mill of something is the same as 1%. E. g. , a 20 mill levy on $100,000 would equal 2% of $100,000, or $2,000. For the purposes of our example, let’s say that ABC County has a 10 mill levy on our property. This amounts to 1% of our property’s total value.
In our example, let’s say that the city of Appleton, where we live in ABC County, has its own 20 mill (2%) property tax and that the Appleton Unified School District levies its own property tax at a 30 mill rate (3%).
In our example, since we owe a 1% property tax to the county, 2% to the city, and 3% to the school district, we owe, in total, 1 + 2 + 3 = 6%
Don’t forget that, to multiply a percentage, you must either first change the percentage back to its decimal form or else divide your answer by 100. In our example, our total property tax rate is 6% and our property is worth $664,000. To find the amount we owe in taxes, we multiply 0. 06 × $664,000 = $39,840.
The exact properties that will be subject to tax vary greatly from state to state and locality to locality. You can usually learn which forms of property can be taxed from your local tax authority. For example, in California, the Board of Equalization provides online documents covering this topic. [8] X Research source
Many tax authorities will have information available online that can help you find your personal property taxes. For instance, this site lists car tax calculators for the states that offer them (scroll down to see the list. ) For example, let’s say that we want to buy a car in ABC County USA. Based on the state and local tax codes, we determine that we need to pay two expenses: a single one-time registration tax based on the value of the car and a recurring yearly fee to get our license tabs. If the car is worth $20,000 the registration tax rate is 1. 5%, and the license tabs fee is $50, we’ll owe 20,000 × 0. 015 + 50 = 300 + 50 = $350.
Sometimes, beneath a certain value, intangible property will be tax free. For instance, before 2007 in Florida, the first $250,000 of property (including most intangibles) was not subject to tax. [9] X Research source In our example, let’s say that, in addition to our car, we also have $300,000 of trusts that are eligible to be taxed. If the first $200,000 is tax-free in our state and, after that, the tax is 50 cents per $100 (0. 5%) we’ll need to pay 100,000 × 0. 005 = $500.
In our example, if we don’t have any other personal property tax liabilities besides our car and our trusts, we’ll simply need to pay 350 + 500 = $850.
