With notices in the mail and a payment deadline looming, maybe Bill O’Brien will hear another round of “Danny Boy” from a grateful taxpayer again this year. More likely he’ll encounter some confused and angry customers. So he has some advice.
Much of the advice has to do with cars. Cars and taxes. And how not to get charged for something you don’t own.
O’Brien is New Haven’s tax assessor. He’s responsible for deciding how much your house or car or business is worth — the basis on which the city government taxes you.
That means he’s often the target of people furious about what they believe are costly mistakes or deliberate screw-ups on their tax bills.
O’Brien said he actually does get flowers occasionally, or even a song, from citizens grateful for his help in ironing out confusion over their bills. (Click on the above video for that story.) But the typical encounter with someone upset about a bill tends more toward the furious.
That outrage tends to manifest itself starting next month in the first floor City Hall office O’Brien runs.
That’s because a new year’s worth of property taxes are due on July 1; people have until Aug. 2 to pay before incurring fines. The city sent out 71,000 bills last week for real estate, personal property, and motor vehicle taxes.
Much of the outrage stems from confusion, O’Brien said. In an effort to head off some of that confusion, O’Brien agreed to field questions from Independent readers about how their taxes work, and to offer tips on how to avoid problems this year.
The outrage started early this year, a tough budget-setting year in New Haven. O’Brien found himself the target of outrage at a May aldermanic hearing. More complaints may surface Monday night as the aldermanic Tax Abatement Committee meets again at City Hall at 6 p.m. The committee has invited citizens to come forward with “any tax-related problems or concerns they encountered with the city.”
At the last hearing, O’Brien heard from local artists whose tax bills shot up this year. Artists who were assessed for having hundreds of dollars worth of equipment in past years suddenly were charged on the basis of owning $5,000 of equipment. Exactly $5,000. Without a visit from an assessor.
Click on the play arrow to watch O’Brien explain why that happened, and why he thinks it’s fair.
When he took over the assessor’s job in 2008, he said, he discovered that small businesses throughout town — not just artists — had low property assessments that hadn’t changed in 15 years. He suspected that some of them must have bought new equipment but not reported it on voluntary forms. He said he used an industry standard evaluation for how much equipment businesses of certain sizes buy or own in a typical year, and came up with the across-the-board new assessments that way.
Artists who claimed they haven’t bought new equipment complained they were treated as guilty until proven innocent, guilty of having purchased but not reported thousands of dollars of property, and being taxed accordingly.
O’Brien responded in an interview that anyone who feels that way can prove it in an appeals process.
That is part of my job, to make sure everybody is paying their fair share,” he said. “If everybody does pay their fair share, everybody pays less.”“
One reader asked if O’Brien could clarify how that appeals process works — and whether people can try again in future years if they’re turned down. Yes they can, O’Brien responded. Click on the play arrow to watch him explain how that works.
Another reader asked O’Brien to explain one of the most inscrutable challenges for any non-math major to understand: how the property revaluation phase-in works, and how much taxpayers should expect values to rise per year. (For starters, in Connecticut, an assessment represents 70 percent of a property’s value, not 100 percent.) Click on the play arrow to watch O’Brien walk through the process.
No other issue compares to motor vehicle tax problems, O’Brien observed. That’s what people more often than not come into his office livid about. Some 100,000 vehicles are owned in New Haven, according to O’Brien.
Sell a house, and usually a lawyer handles the tax changes and paperwork at closing. Sell a car, and you’re usually on your own.
When you sell a car, he advised, try to keep the license plate if you’re buying a new one. That simplifies the tax process. You don’t need to come to his office to change your account. On July 1 you’ll get a bill for your old car’s taxes. In January you’ll receive a “supplemental” bill with an adjustment: Assuming your new car is worth more, you’ll be charged the extra amount you should have been paying for the year. And theoretically, in the future, you’ll be taxed on only the new car.
If you don’t keep the license plates, it gets more complicated. Then you need to come into the office to show paperwork proving you sold the old car.
And showing you got rid of the old registration isn’t enough. Some people may no longer have a car registered, but may continue to own it, stashed in the yard. Show the bill of sale. And show a copy of the front and back of the title. If you’ve sent the car to a junk yard, “make sure [you] get a dated receipt showing the motor vehicle type and the vin [vehicle identification number],” O’Brien advised.
O’Brien added that people have 27 months to do all this from the time a car is sold, and avoid paying any taxes on the car for time beyond the sale date. After 27 months, you’re on the hook.
Another point of confusion: What period of time the tax bill covers. The July 1 bill covers the previous nine months and the next three months.
O’Brien said he recognizes that some people will view him as “the bad guy.”
“That’s just part of my job,” he said. “I’m not typically in a position where I’m going to make people happy.”
However, he said, only “a very small few” end up unhappy with the city tax process in New Haven. “99.9 percent of everyone is most gracious and most cooperative,” he said.
In addition to the woman who sang him “Danny Boy,” some taxpayers have shown their appreciation by bringing him plants or flowers, he said. What kind of flowers? He doesn’t remember, he said. But they were “nice bouquets.”
Paul Bass Photo
This story is like if they interviewed BP about great father's day gifts in the middle of an oil spill.