Property Tax Reassessment Cycles: Significance for Uniformity and Effective Rates

Abstract

Assessment cycles establish the points at which assessors are legally presumed to revalue property in their jurisdictions so that property tax burdens may be reallocated The operation, logic, and effects of existing cycles have, however, largely been ignored in analysis, even as attacks on property taxation, including the Jarvis-Gann initiative, drastically revise these cycles and their valuation presumptions. This article identifies cycles found in the United States and, on the basis of empirical analysis, concludes that specific cycles improve assess ment uniformity when compared with a general requrrement of annual assess ment, that reassessment improves tax uniformity, and that increased assess ment ratios with reassessment has mixed impact on effective tax rates.