Depending on your location and other important factors, your property taxes will represent an important part of your overall tax payments. Property tax revenue is extremely important for a city like Atlanta’s resources and services, such as public utilities, roads, and law enforcement protection. Since property taxes are important for your city’s growth and maintenance, it’s important to know how Georgia’s local governments determine how your commercial property tax duty is assessed.
What Form of Assessment Is Used?
The most common approach for your local government to assess your commercial property taxes is to give you an income and expense form. This form will request commercial property owners to give more details on all of the income and expenses that they have acquired this past year. For your rental income, the form will ask you questions regarding your purchase of the property and if there have been any additional changes since the purchase, such as a structure improvement or structure demolition. This will help determine if there is additional property value that wasn’t accounted for in other assessments, which will then change your tax assessment. It’s also crucial that commercial property owners identify all expenses relating to their property in this form as well. Expenses can include management fees, other agency fees, any legal fees, advertising fees, payroll, insurance, utilities, supplies, repairs and maintenance, etc. Your safest bet as a business owner is to list all expenses, and then let the assessors figure out which costs are relevant or not.
Once the assessors receive your income and expense form, they use a relevant cap rate to determine what the initial value of your commercial property is. They will then take that value and calculate your expected local taxes for the upcoming year.
For commercial property owners, knowing how your local government calculates your property value will help you predict your property’s future financial worth. Knowing this process will also better prepare you for determining if you should appeal your commercial property taxes. For more information on your commercial property and taxes Contact Hecht Walker, P.C. .