Agricultural Assessments
Similar to the 2007 and 2009 assessments, the 2011 agricultural assessments will be increasing. In each odd numbered year, the Iowa Department of Revenue (IDR) gathers extensive amounts of income and expense information from a 5 year period. Production years that are used in the current calculations are crop years 2005 through 2009. Click here to see the IDR newsletter dealing with this issue. The 2011 assessment brings some other changes in addition to the overall productivity increase.
One of the major changes is the revaluation of all agricultural outbuildings in the county. Over the past two years, our staff has keyed in critical building information on 18,000 buildings into the computer assisted mass appraisal (CAMA) software. After reviewing the outbuilding information on the farm site, final assessed values were calculated. The Agricultural Building Factor was also changed for 2011 and that calculation reduces agricultural building values by 69%. This calculation reduces building value and is redirects it to the agricultural land. Overall, agricultural building assessments will be going down by about 50% from the 2010 assessment level.
Agricultural land will also be seeing some changes from the past four years. Prior to 2007 and the use of Corn Suitability Ratings (CSR) to set agricultural land value, there was an element of land use built into the land assessment calculations. Cropland was valued at the highest level and had considerations for soil productivity as well. Open pasture was typically valued at nearly half the cropland rate and timbered areas were usually valued at half the open pasture rate. When we moved to the pure dollar per CSR methodology, the poorer ground saw increased assessments and the better crop ground saw decreased assessments. We knew this would be happening, but could not find any hard data to determine how to adjust, or how much to adjust. That was until mid 2008 when we were able to obtain a copy of the Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) crop field layer. With this new map layer, and the Iowa Department of Revenue productivity worksheet, we were able to determine that non-crop areas should be assessed 49% lower than the crop areas. This non-crop acre assessment reduction will also push additional value to the crop acres
Although most farms will see increased assessments (and some will see decreased assessments), property taxes will not be increasing by the same amount as the value. This is due to the agricultural rollback. 2010 agricultural properties are taxed at 69% of assessed value. It is estimated that the 2011 agricultural properties will be taxed at 57.4% of assessed value. We are estimating that the average Dubuque County agricultural taxable value will only rise by 4%. (This assumes the average farm will have average amounts of crop ground, non-crop ground, and outbuildings.) The 2011 agricultural assessments will be used in the calculation of tax bills that come due in Sept of 2012 and March of 2013.
Any taxpayer wishing to appeal the assessment may do so to the Dubuque County Board of Review between April 16th and May 5th. Protest forms are available at the Dubuque County Assessor’s office. Protests should include specific information indicating why the assessed value does not reflect the agricultural productivity value.
Click here to see a copy of the presentation given to the Dubuque County Farm Bureau on March 9th 2011.