Senior land taxes; your county or state?????

Anything you do in life is a considered a contract. Anyone (that is 100%) of the people you meet are going to introduce themselves with a contract offer. That would be sheriffs with arrest warrants or eviction notices as well.

The audio is some seminars that were done on the subject. Goes in depth into how to cancel contract offers without falling into dishonor.

As to applicability ... a property tax notice (especially one that you have no funds to pay) is just another contract offer. Send the county treasurer a counter offer (I have no funds at the moment but if you will offer me credit terms of 1% apr interest I shall pay in full your entire payment ... something like that) and mail it certified.

Now the treasurer is either going to go silent (he accepts your offer) or he is going to come back at you with another offer (pay up now or I will send the sheriff out in 90 days). Make sure you keep answering each offer with your own counter offer.

Understand that the site I gave has no specific guidance on property tax problems. What I detailed above would be my approach in your situation. If you had the money then I would be suggesting you simply pay your obligations. As that is not the case then you have to dig further into principles to keep damage at a minimum.

Several things to remember ... (1) contracts are dynamic .. they change from day to day ... nothing fixed about them at all, (2) facts are on the moon .. what one person considers TRUTH another might deem irrelevant.

The entire matter might be settled based upon how YOU react to the situation and not what the facts of the situation are. This statement is true for ANY event that might occur in your experience.

Michigan has a program that if your property taxes are a certain percentage of your income, the state pays part of them

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I don't know about tax breaks for senior citizens, but let me tell you about something crazy, right here in Indiana.

Some brilliant folks of one party in our state decided to show all Hoosiers how much they care about veterans. They passed a bill giving qualifying tax breaks to some veterans. They fixed a fancy name to the bill, and went campaigning with it.

"Vote for the party that LOVES and CARES about our veterans."
"Give our veterans the tax breaks they deserve."
"These veterans fought for our freedom."
"The other party wants to kill the bill because they don't care about veterans. Send us to Indianapolis to show veterans that we care about them."

The bill passed into law. Lots of veterans I spoke to thought they were going to get a property tax break.

Turns out, after the fact, that the only qualifying veterans are those who fought in the Great War...World War I, are eligible for the tax break.

For those wondering, this means that you would have been born in 1899 or so. The US entered WWI in 1917, after Europe had been embroiled in the ghastly war since 1914.

How many surviving World War I vets do you know? How many did you know 10 years ago?

It really is mind-boggling to know how much that political party pushed this issue, and made it such a topic on TV and the papers.

Oh, BTW, the champion of this bill is being touted as a potential contender for a run for President sometime in the future.

Is there any legal way to have your three parcels turned into just one? That would make a huge difference. Then see if you can have your property reappraised.

in Michigan your taxes are based on your property values..however..if you can't afford them your rebate is based on your income tax return..you get a property tax rebate for anything larger than a certain percentage of your income. They call it a homestead property tax credit and it applies to you home only not rental or other properties

I get 78% back on my taxes because that is the part my house and five acres of my land, ...they do have a limit as in if you live in a Mc mansion you would probably not get a refund or a very low %..Mo.

Thank you SO much for these myriad, very helpful answers. Patt, in order to combine the parcels, I would have to re-employ as surveyor to update my survey and redo it, erasing two property boundary lines. (Lucky they are contiguous). Howevr, my original surveyor died and the one who bought his business wants big bucks plus it requires a lawyer and a lot of time. Not to mention I am not sole owner of the largest parcel. I did think about that. Well, I think about it a lot! At this point I am looking to sell my interest in some of my land, if only I could find a local Spring Valley or Agmantoo!
Palani, thanks for the succinct description. I am taking the day off from work and will go to the library with my laptop to check out that site. I hope they will reference some books I can find at the library or barnes and noble. Can you suggest any? I really appreciate the concept of life as a series of contracts because it fits my experience so I can understand and use that as stable data in venturing into the very murky depths of human relations where I need to be at cause rather than at effect! And soon!

I asked for what other states and especially counties in Virginia do because my county is pretty small and has some backwater-minded uneducated people on the board of supervisors. I give them credit, it's a very tough job. Some of them get voted on one time, take a terrible, appalling beating from locals, and get voted off again. We had two lawyers who were on the board who got an animal shelter built after years with none. Dogs and cats were euthanized and tossed out on the landfill, suffering and not even dead. However the shelter is too small and they put it next to the landfill where who goes? Those lawyers were tossed off the board because they raised the taxes. Hey, I voted against them myself! I am saving all the helpful comments because I believe most of the present board would rework the tax structure if I could present them with a successful, viable alternative some other state or county used (not a phoney one for WWI veterans which I feel almost old enough to be!)

Not a problem, here is the link for the form to claim the tax relief, under the affidavit is the requirements and penalties for violations followed by the form itself.
http://orangecountyva.gov/commission...Relief_App.pdf

Another way to hopefully recoup some of the spending is of course the fact that you can claim depreciation on your house, the IRS expects you to do so; if you also do any business through it at all you can claim it as a depreciable asset. If they won't let you save your money in some ways, make sure you do in others.

RV with full facilities can qualify as a "dwelling unit" under the IRS code section 280A(f)(1). The U.S. tax court case of Haberkorn v. Commissioner. 75 T.C. 259 (Nov. 12, 1980 filed) gives further guidance on the tax deductibility of RVs.

" The term ''dwelling unit'' includes a house, apartment,
condominium, mobile home, boat, or similar property, and all
structures or other property appurtenant to such dwelling unit."

In addition, IRS 2007 Publication 936 page 2 explains qualifications for deductibility, as well.

Maybe you can save enough in other ways that you can make up the difference. I apologize if you already do all of this, but I didn't want to assume and not pass along information which could help.

Typent, thank you so much. You will NEVER hear me griping about TMI! Especially when what I have worked and saved and sacrificed for all my life is at stake, my land!!!!!

You might find the material compiled in 20-30 different books but the audios give you something you will never find in any book ... actual experience.

It sounds like the county your in is stretching your state tax law past it's intent.

If it is anything like Texas the state sets tax laws the county must stay within. One of those is the counties authority to make assessment of a home site which is within a larger parcel, generally the home and one acre that it sits on can be set aside from an ag exemption etc. and appraised separately as a homestead.. -If- there is actually a homestead/homesite on it. Your county may have just assumed it, assessed it that way, and left it to you to correct it through challenging the assessment.

You might want to read up on the state laws and see if your county is running afoul of them, and see if your state offers anything you can take advantage of.

It might also be helpful to talk to a state representative or senator about the counties practices.

It strikes me that appraising a home site separately on each of your other parcels, if there is indeed no house or clear home site there, with no persons living on the parcel, and the parcel is clearly used 100% for agricultural purposes only should likely violate the limits of the counties discretion in application of the state law. Here they are allowed to do that if you live on the parcel and it is fairly standard practice. It is also common practice for counties to asses the maximum even in known error, and it is up to you to go point out their assessment errors.

It could be as simple as challenging that assessment, and showing them their error if they are in error and the additional home sites as bogus. Most counties hire outside firms to do assessments, and those firms simply use averages and boilerplate assessments for properties and are very often if error. I know here I rarely hear of a challenge of an assessment failing. My father just challenged his and won this year.

Heck I read up on our state property tax laws this year, found a term which wasn't clear that I thought counties would take advantage of vs taxpayers.. I wrote the state senator who originally wrote the legislation and he sent me back a types letter thanking me, and that he has directed his staff to begin writing a draft amendment to the law to clarify the law in taxpayers favor. Ya never know.