Filing your tax grievance on your own is certainly possible and to do this, you’ll only have to carefully research the value of your property, proceed with filling out your Grievance petition and lastly, you just have to write a letter in support that details your position. While doing so on your own may seem easy and simple, there’s plenty of room for mistakes and that is why we recommend that you hire a professional firm who can help you with this. In our experience, they have a much better track record of grieving taxes successfully compared to homeowners. To support our opinion and recommendation, below we’re going to take a better look at some of the top 5 reasons why it’s best that you retain a lawyer for the purpose of filing your tax grievance.
Tax grievance can be very time consuming
Because the tax grievance process can take quite a bit, firms need to charge clients a small fee. They need to conduct proper research, fill out forms, write supporting letters, and finally prepare for the hearing and attend it. While this is not an extremely difficult process, it does take a lot of work and time. If you think that you can’t cope with these on your own, then you may want to hire a property tax grievance company to do it for you.
Unless you’re successful, it’ll cost you nothing
The majority of grievance companies are going to represent you in a tax grievance complaint for an amount that ranges between forty to fifty percent of the first year’s tax savings. While that’s a great amount, you won’t need to pay anything if you aren’t successful and your firm will certainly be very happy to help increase the tax savings you’re eligible to receive. If you’re successful though, you’re only going to have to pay the company a small amount of your first year’s worth of savings and benefit from reduced assessments for a number of years. Depending on the firm, some may charge you a smaller amount of the savings paid out over 2 or 3 years. While that’s still a good deal, it’s not recommended to hire companies that charge you upfront and more than half of 1 year’s worth of tax savings.
Property tax grievance companies are familiar with the Grievance Day hearing
Not everyone is comfortable speaking in an open hearing and if that’s the case for you, then you could hire a representative to do it for you. While the Grievance Day isn’t a very daunting atmosphere, it’s best that you hire a professional who can speak on your behalf if being in this position is uncomfortable for you. The process can also be a bit complicated for a lay individual, yet with a representative on your side, everything is going to be a lot easier.
Firms will handle everything on establishing market value
Establishing market value is the hardest part of filing the grievance. To get help, you can contact your local real estate agent to find similar properties, yet a professional tax grievance firm has access to public records as well and these can contain property sales that weren’t recorded using the local multiple listing systems. On top of that, a firm can give you a good estimation of whether pursuing your tax grievance is a good idea or not and that’s because they have a great sense of the tendencies in the local boards when evaluating various kinds of petitions.
If you don’t win the grievance, the grievance company can handle your appeal
Last but not least, if you weren’t successful with your grievance, the representative can handle your appeal. Having a professional representing you in the first administrative hearing before the board guarantees that your firm is going to be up-to-date with the facts. Therefore, if your petition isn’t successful and you’ll need to hire a professional anyway, you may want to have someone who can actually handle your case from start to finish.