By Logan Wells, News Director | Logan@kymnradio.net
In the middle of March, property owners received their tax statement and valuation notice in the mail from Rice County. The statement shares how much property owners pay in taxes to fund their local governments, including Cities, School districts, and County governments. This week to help you understand the tax statement, we will be summarizing a different local government each day that sets a tax rate.
Stories in the Series
- Listen To More: Rice County Tax Assessor Joshua Schoen
- Monday: How Your Property Taxes Are Calculated
- Tuesday: City of Northfield’s Tax Increase Summary
- Wednesday: Northfield Public Schools Tax Increase Summary
- Thursday: City of Dundas’s Tax Levy Summary
- Friday: Rice County Tax Increase Summary
We are starting this series by discussing how property taxes are determined. Two main factors go into the amount you have to pay. First, the value of the property you own, which the county assessor determines. Second, each local government’s tax rates are in the area where you live. You can see on your tax statement a breakdown of each government tax rates.
Rice County Tax Assessor Joshua Schoen stated that Minnesota has one of the most complicated tax systems in the nation, but that his office has a set of laws and rules that guide how they determine property values:
“So, if you go to buy a home, last time some mortgage company will hire an appraiser to do an appraisal to see if they can lend you that amount of money for what you’ve offered. And they’ll really zero in on the subject. Well, we do mass appraisal, so we enter all these sales in our system. We have all this information we’ve collected on all these properties. And then we run some models on what you know, where are areas that were overvalued, where areas that were overvalued, how was the market change from one year to the next” – Joshua Schoen, Rice County Tax Assessor, on the KYMN Morning Show
Schoen stated every assessment has to come in with 90% to 105% based on comparable properties sold. He stated that county staff are required to visit properties once every five years as well.
Additional Resources:
Listen to the full conversation with Rice County Tax Assessor Joshua Schoen here:
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