Richard Fromewick Authors, "Great Assessment News!"

Most municipalities, including Nassau County, assess properties at a fraction of its estimated fair market value. The Nassau County Assessor has claimed for the past several years to be assessing commercial properties at 1% of its fair market value. However, we have just entered into an agreement with the Nassau County Attorney’s Office to negotiate the 2011/12 and 2012/13 assessments as though the assessments are based on .905% of the actual fair market value. What exactly does this mean? If a property is assessed at 10,000, the County Assessor’s website would claim a fair market value of $1,000,000. However, due to the agreement mentioned above, the County Attorney’s Office will negotiate tax reduction proceedings as if the property is assessed as worth $1,105,000. Thus, if the property is really worth $1,000,000, and the County agrees to negotiate as if the property is assessed at $1,105,000, then the taxpayer would get a 10% reduction in assessment to bring their estimated fair market value down to $1,000,000. The moral of this story … there is more than one way … to get a tax reduction.