Property tax mailings are misleading

Iowa County Residents,

Proposed property tax notices have probably arrived to your mailbox. Similar to last year, this is a very confusing document.

The top portions of these are correct, but the bottom two portions are not accurate depictions of your proposed property taxes. These documents are calculated using assumptions and the flawed calculations compared to actual data.

The first issue with the calculation is the assumption of a 10% increase in your property’s valuation. Some properties increased more, but most increased less than 10%. It depends on property improvements.

County-wide taxable valuations increased approximately 3%. Here’s the actual breakdown of the property tax increase for Iowa County:

Rural Services Increase: $51,670 (2% of current year)

General Services Increase: $571,250 (7.5% of current year)

Combined PT increase: $622,920 (6.5% of current year)

This does not reflect the actual number your property taxes will go up. It’s just the county’s portion.

Actual property tax increases are dependent on class of property, your particular valuation change and the city/school changes. You will have to calculate the other levying authorities increases manually, or use Iowan’s for Tax Relief, which has an online tool to make this easier.

Their website is itrlocal.org and there is a red link to easily access it.

A document of this nature is difficult to accurately show property tax increases. Over $800,000 statewide was spent on these misleading mailings last year.

I strongly encourage our constituents to talk to our legislators about removing this requirement from the law, saving thousands of property tax dollars and public confusion.

Please reach out to the levying authorities directly with questions regarding their specific property tax increases. The auditor and supervisors do not have authority or insight on schools and cities.

For county questions, please reach out to a member of the Board of Supervisors: Kevin Heitshusen, 319-330-6304; Maas, 319-530-2952; Jonathan Degen, 319-330-6928; Seth Meyer, 319-330-0525; Chris Montross, 319-430-5243.