In regards to the taxation questions brought up at the December RKLD Board Meeting. The confusion is caused by “equalized value”. Attached is an article explaining how this affects your assessed value and taxes. The district reports to the department of revenue a total tax amount. The district reports to the department of revenue a total tax amount.

Year 2020
$690,071,086.00 Total Property Value
0.00049 Approved Mill Rate
$338,134.83 Total Tax

I reported $338,135 and made a note in the comments regarding our approved rate and increase in assumed taxes. The PC-505 Complete form is done automatically by the state.

From there the WIDOR spreads the tax across the townships within the district which calculates back to our approved rate .00049. Doing the math on your assessed value is not possible because of the equalization. True to the term it does “equalize” and your long term rate will be the same as everyone else ensuring you pay your “fair share”.

For the annual meeting proposal I used $660M for our total property value. This was the current (2019 information). A statewide increase of 6% would of course have some variation geographically so where on the low side. A 30M increase or 4.5%.

The report shows Wisconsin’s total statewide equalized property value as of January 1, 2020, was $613 billion, a 6 percent increase over the prior year; growth occurred in all property classifications. Equalized values are based on data from January 1, 2019 to January 1, 2020.

Mark Meyer, RKLD Treasure

For further information download these documents:

Wisconsin Equalized Values Explained

Property tax is a topic that we can all relate to, but few of us can explain in any detail. What we do know is that it creates questions at many levels. Every year, each parcel of taxable real estate or item of personal property generates a tax bill. We always wonder what will happen to our tax bill when our municipality announces that it plans on a revaluation of all properties for the coming year. As the  municipality works out its budget, the newspapers report on the changes to the tax rate. We know that the December tax bill can have a large impact on our own budgets; however, we often don’t understand how we can effectively correct, change, or impact those tax bills.

It is the local assessor’s responsibility to discover, list, and value each taxable real estate parcel and each taxable personal property account. That value is what the local clerk uses to determine the share of the property tax that is borne by the property. We count on the assessor’s estimate to reflect our property’s market value (we want accuracy). We also count on everyone else’s assessment being equally accurate (we want uniformity). What we really hope for is that the property tax system is administered fairly. We are willing to pay our fair share. That would mean that our share of the local taxes to be collected is the same as our percentage of the total taxable property. That is the purpose of the locally assessed values.  To read the rest of this article please click to download the full document.